This is just a waste of a good light. There really should not have any timer stepdown on an ATR. It defeats the whole thing.
Be it in a water environment or in a freezing rainstorm, the light is used for its intended purpose - to throw some illumination in a low visibility context. After some 3 minutes it drops! The ambient temp could transfer that excess heat, but some overprotective “engineer” added a failsafe.
I wonder if you rotated to medium then back to high would reset the timer?
I initially ordered a SD03 (XML2 - 900lm) as didn’t have this timed throttling. Sofirn informed me this was no longer produced. So I took the dive (pun) with the SD05. Made me an irresistible offer. This was yesterday - takes some 3 to 4 weeks to get into my hands.
I think they may be having issues in moving this model. May not appeal to the savvy diver or outdoorsman.
As for the CCT, Sofirn never mentions any values. There is a video of the warmer colors (reds, yellows, orange) being absorbed by water - up to 45 meters. So if you plan on throwing some light 150 feet, a cooler CCT would be better. However, in atmospheric conditions, a warmer neutral light is more popular.
Knurling may not be too comfortable in water laden hands. But I agree a subtle grip surface would be a plus.
Agreed on the timed stepdown (no need for it with ATR), but I do like the smooth unknurled stepped-hourglass shape of these lights (all 3 mentioned above). They shouldn’t slide out of the hand too easily with any decent grip. And a lanyard is a must for underwater!
Tried mine out the other day. Got to 16’ with it and it performed fine. Was in too high turbidity water for it to be useful, so can’t really comment on beam or runtimes. I did notice the magnetic ring slid to ‘on’ once when I wasn’t using it. Not too happy about that. Overall, it functions, which is half the battle with a dive light.
I like it better than my thorfire S1 so far. The S1 is too bulky, and the ring is way too loose, always worried it’s going to turn on by itself. It also got sand under the magnetic ring so now it feels gritty when you move it. Beam isn’t all that great for me either. I need flood, and it’s too much of a thrower.
If this light had variable output with a low around 1 lumen (or less) and the existing high of about 2500, with the magnetic ring control, I’d be all over it.
And now I almost regret my impulsiveness…
Hadn’t given any thought to check them. Sofirn store owed me on my previous order (3 holsters at full price - couldn’t get their messaging to work on my end). Thru email I worked out a discount on this order. About same price.
Much that I like Sofirn for their continuous upgrading of their lights, the Ali Store leaves a lot to be desired in functionality. The messaging is cut to 40 characters, there is no invoice (for printing) and Sofirn can’t (or won’t) cancel an order to replace with a supercede. This last exchange makes for a jumble of my purchase(s) with no mention of the SD05. Have to trust Cissy (or Crow) in delivering the goods.
Fasttech on the other hand cancelled a discontinued item, offered a credit refund or a discounted price for a replacement. They often don’t have the merchandise on hand (hence the “ships in x days”) and rely on the manufacturer. So they may offer an item without knowledge of availability.
I seems so, but then again ATR kicks in very fast, so you won’t be able to reach another 3 minutes of full output...at least not in usual atmospheric conditions.
I was able to test ATR on my sample. It seems ATR kicks in at 50°C already and not at 55°C. Even another reset would not take it beyond 53°C. I was able to reproduce the stepdown behavior several times. This could either be a wrong temperature calibration from factory or the manual is wrong about those 55°C. My thermal imaging camera has an accuracy of +/- 1°C.
Bottom line: The SD05 is the right flashlight for people who don’t want to burn their hands. :-D
So another reset can be done. Blizzard / freezing rain would dissipate heat before ATR kicks in. An annoyance to reset but will have to live with that. Changing the driver on a rotary switch and everything glued together makes for an un-moddable light.
If I had the skill and knowledge to re-program the MCU, many lights would lose their timed behavior.
Can you get that magnetic ring off and check the components? In a number of dive lights using magnet switches I’ve found low grade steel bearing and springs used. OK for land. Goes to rust and garbage in short order when used in saltwater.
UPDATE
The lake trip is done and I was able to give the Sofirn SD05 some underwater time. One day while fishing, I tied the SD05 to a string and sunk it to 25 feet of water and left it there for about 5 hours. Then I took it back to land and let my children play with it in the 4 foot pool. There was no sign of water ingress, no fogging, nothing. It worked flawlessly.
This pic is back at shore, immediately following it’s time at 25 feet. Sorry that I don’t have a proper underwater camera - I had to stick my Pixel 3 inside a ziplock bag and submerge it to try and capture some underwater shots… which doesn’t work out all that well.
With the phone, I've double bagged mine at the beach and swam but you never know if it's going to really keep it dry. However, I think you're talking about taking shots through the plastic bag which doesn't yield good results either.
Regarding stepdowns and Sofirn's ATR this is what I have suggested to Sofirn in general...
Please remove timer-triggered stepdowns from future drivers/flashlights. There is hardly any reason to have
both thermal and timed stepdowns at the same time. Customers on TLF and BLF would greatly appreciate to
have thermal regulation only.
Please allow a user defined choice of ATR thresholds (e.g. 45°C, 55°C, 65°C) just like HaikeLite did with their
SC26…
Thermal protection setting can be accessed by 10 clicks:
The light flashes once => turn it off to select 50 degree step-down temperature
The light flashes twice => turn it off to select 60 degree step-down temperature
The light flashed 3 times => turn it off to select 70 degree step-down temperature
Important: Please set 50°C to default by factory to make sure that customer complaints about too much heat are as
low as possible. Barry recently talked about it on TLF. With 50°C as default this problem should be solved. More
experienced flashlight users or people who want to unleash the full potential can raise the threshold to 60°C or 70°C.
There is no disadvantage with this new feature but Sofirn will make their flashlights even more powerful and more
successful.
Work and production cost are often not the issue, convincing a manufacturer that a change is an improvement and profitable is the big hurdle. And Sofirn, and also Simon from Convoy Flashlights, get loads of suggestions coming from BLF-members, and that is a mixture of good ideas and mediocre to bad ideas, so they have to sift through the lot as well to find the good ones that are an improvement and/or will increase the profit.
No, you are right, some changes seem 100% a good idea. But it so appears that what we flashoholics as a group see as reasonable changes is not just as obvious for the chinese manufacturers, 1) because they sometimes have less insight in how a flashlight should be, 2) because they know things about manufacturing that we do not know, and 3) because their audience and profit comes from a wider group than just flashlight enthousiasts from BLF, and for muggles some changes are rightout a bad idea.
