I have a question. Will there be a BLF zoomie flashlight? A big zoomie like Uniquefire 1405 or 1508 ? I would love to buy it. I am too stupid come up with an original design, but since this forum created a BLF lantern, a BLF GT thrower and a BLF Q8 soda can flashlight + a bunch of other flashlights, making a BLF zoomie should be possible as well.
There was the Cometa a few years ago that used Toykeeper’s firmware. Frankly, zoomie are a style of light that is not so great to use. You get full brightness with a wide beam and maybe 1/4 1/3 brightness when focused tight. I keep my Cometa in the box.
Really cool idea!! A bright zoomie. Maybe multiple color leds and shapes you can make…?
Yeah, I have a few zoomies, and I never use them...
(By the way, I think you have the highlighted part backwards.)
I wish you would get full brightness with a wide beam!
No, I got it right. I measured 810 lumen on wide angle. As you narrow the focus the output drops to 270 lumen. The battery is still drawing the high amps and the led is still generating lots of heat, but you only get a fraction of the lumens. Hmmm, it’s exactly 1/3 the output so that’s a 66% loss in brightness.
I'm sorry, but that's not how zoomies work.
EDIT:
Zoomies are brightest in throw mode.
They are very dim, in comparison, in flood mode.
I own several zoomies, and have read about them on BLF for years.
He’s just using the wrong word. What he means by “brightness” is the total lumens output, which is definitely lower in throw mode, because of various losses. Some of the losses are inherent in the design, and some are because of low quality parts and/or bad design.
Now you both have it wrong.
A zoomie will output many more lumens in throw mode than in flood mode.
Am I the only one on BLF with zoomie common sense? 
More lux, less lumens!
I may have failed to detect the presence of a joke. Not sure.
In any case, zoomies make more lumens in flood mode, and more candelas in throw mode. Usually the difference in both cases are quite large.
For example, I measured a classic SK-68 recently:
- Floody/wide mode, Eneloop:
- High: 67 lm
- Low: 18 lm
- Throwy/narrow mode, Eneloop:
- High: 37 lm
- Low: 10 lm
About a BLF zoomie, that sort of happened once, and it was a disaster. It was the CPFi Cometa, which was known for destroying itself as soon as a battery was inserted. Also had a whole bunch of other issues, and IIRC it resulted in Banggood firing Neal and changing the company it contracts to build Astrolux products, and several threads were shut down on BLF.
I have one of the lights the Cometa was trying to clone though, a modded Jax Z1. It’s pretty nice for a zoomie. Here’s a beamshot:
Okay, I guess I got it wrong...
Looks like the joke is on me.
"More candelas in throw mode" must be why throw mode looks much brighter.
I thought brighter means more lumens, but clearly it doesn't. 
hey,
First of all, a huge thank you to everyone involved in getting these projects out the door. This is the kind of community that really works together as a team and creates great innovative light products.
However, how come there was never a “v2” version of a BLF flashlight? I don’t mean updated emitters or new firmware, more like a new version of an existing BLF flashlight? Is it because BLF creations are always perfect (of course they are!) or they are simply without any features that need to be introduced? Or is it easier to just create something entirely new?
Thanks for everything you guys do.
The BLF X5/X6 was actually v2 of the original BLF EE X6.
Fireflies replaced the E07 with E07 v2. And before that, they updated the ROT66 to sort of a v1.5.
It could be argued that the Emisar D1/D1S and GT-Micro/GT-Mini are v3 of the BLF X5/X6.
The Emisar D18 is a lot like Meteor v2.
Reylight brought back the old Ti Triple in the form of the new Dawn. It’s a v2.
There are often clones, too… like when the BLF GT came out, it created a whole category of clones.
The Convoy S2+ is basically v2 or even v3 or v4 of its lineage.
The Astrolux S41 has been revised as S42 and S43, though admittedly both newer models aren’t much like the original. The original was more like v2 of the BLF A6.
Etcetera.
Things keep moving; they just don’t always have an explicit “v2” on the label.
Maybe the clearest V2 would be the currently made Lucky Sun D80, thanks to the dedicated effort of TheOnlyDocc: there was a BLF version of the D80 a few years ago that had somewhat better firmware on the driver, a DTP board and a better led, and now Lucky Sun is prepared to allow extra hardware changes too and there will be a new version with a better heat transfer, improved tail section, and a completely new Lexel designed driver running Bistro. The looks and dimensions are unchanged from the original D80, so I call that a BLF D80 V2 
Thanks for the details ToyKeeper / djozz, that explains a lot!
I assumed that v2/v3/… of a model would be somehow named in a similar fashion or would even look similar. The lineage of some of these lights are new to me, but very interesting. It was a bit like ancestry dot com for flashlights 
More lumens in throw mode is a possibility with some zoomies using TIR optics (it’s pretty similar regardless of the zoom setting), but for aspherics the output is higher on flood mode.
…and they’re not always really “BLF” lights, so they’re not on this list.
I accidentally self-appointed myself as the keeper of this list years ago. Back then it was fairly simple — someone here came up with an idea, others stepped up to help, manufacturers were found and things got done. But as BLF’s creations have gotten so much more popular and respected, manufacturers have taken notice of the opportunity. That’s a good thing, I’m glad its happening, but it does make keeping this list difficult at times. If “we” as a community create a flashlight, then the manufacturer iterates on it and releases a derivative “v2” product, is that a BLF light? Its often got the same “bones” underneath, this community’s work is still present in some capacity, but is it really a BLF light? If a manufacturer approaches us first and asks for our help, does that make it a BLF light? Taken to the extreme, maybe every flashlight out there with a Wight-based driver or TK firmware is a BLF light. In some sense they sorta are - they’re better products because of this community’s work. But if I listed every one of those this list would become basically useless and would be a lot more work for me.
But in the end this isn’t my list. Its the community’s list. So if anyone sees something missing that they think should be here, please mention it.
I was refering to total brightness, as in total lumens or total flux coming out the end of the light. This can be measured in an integrating sphere or lumen tube. How wide or narrow the beam is is usually irrelevant when dealing with reflectors. It’s a different story with aspheric style zoomies. When the lens is moved away from the led (making a narrow beam) a lot of light gets trapped or absorbed inside the head which is why the total lumens goes down.
I think you are refering to candela/lux which is more about Intensity. This is measured at a specific distance with a lux meter in the brightest part of the beam and is then calculated to give the ANSI FL1 throw distance. This is more about a distance measurement than about total brightness. You can definitely see that the amount of “lumens per square inch” (= intensity) increases as the focus gets narrower.
You just have to be clear of what exactly is being measured.
Brightness or Intensity.
Lumens or Lux/Candela.
I did not understand you at first, sorry about that.
I also consider the Sofirn Q8 a V2 version of the ThorFire Q8, and a close spinoff of the Q8 is the Sofirn SP36.
An actual BLF Q8 V2 was planned on, and Sofirn picked up the ball, but kind of/sort of went off course with extra battery tube ideas that never made it to production batches. Now there's even more Q8 V2's out there under different names/branding - forgot the name but it's been reviewed here, they copied the style and copied/cloned the driver/firmware.
Good ref that refers to brightness:
http://flashlightwiki.com/Brightness_Bins
and here under "New Meaning":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightness
Was that the Airpro DC7?
I think perhaps the DC7 is to Narsil as the Astrolux S42 was to Bistro. Both were poorly-implemented clones which often missed the point of the original design.
It seems like cloning is such a common thing that companies often don’t even realize it’s unnecessary. With free software, there is no need to imitate it because it can be used directly instead… just need to make sure a few simple rules are followed.