The There Are No Stupid Questions Thread

If you're considering the FW3x or FW4x, how about the FW21 Pro?

It's way brighter and maybe it throws further?

The only thing stopping me from ordering it is the fact that it only comes in cool white right now.

Yeah, I wonder if it'll fit in my pocket, but I plan to order it anyway as long as it were to come in a warmer tint.

I would consider the Sofirn SP33 v3 3500lm. It has a ramping mode, 5000K or 6500K, usb charging, is bright, decent throw, good size hotspot, 26650 size gives long runtime and handles heat well. Budget friendly price.

The ’33 is a nice light (all of the above), but again being Mr Glass Half-Empty, if you get a “decent flooder” and crank up the lemons to try seeing far, your immediate foreground will be stoopit-bright and wash out anything the hotspot could reach. And a throwier light without blinding spill won’t be a good flooder, kinda by definition.

I keep beating this dead horse, but nothing beats 2 lights, one flooder and one thrower.

Best might be a zoomie like a Z1. Then you kinda get the best of both worlds(?).

2 lights are good, but my 2 are the SP33 and SP70. Little and big. Lol. There is no one light that does it all. Maybe those dual pattern lights that have flood patterns and a seperate single reflector for throw, but they are usually big and expensive.
Acebeam x10, Fenix LR40R, Ledlenser has their focus technology, etc…

“Between” is almost always a compromise that tries to do both but does neither very well.

Even just going outside for a few minutes, I’ll take my E03 with diffusion film as a flooder, and ’micro if I want throw. Anything else is one of those lousy compromises.

I’m in the same boat. I was very tempted… but I’d like to see it offered with other emitters. I don’t need 10k lumens on turbo, especially since it doesn’t last but a handful of seconds.

The multi-emmiter light is just like a reflector light, just with 3 small reflectors instead of a single bigger one. So you do have a hotspot. It’s a smaller reflector so the hotspot is bigger.

The only reason it’s flood would be better is that it’s brighter. I don’t think there would be a big difference in the angle the light comes out.

You can see a similar comparison here with the EC01 and EC03. The EC03 has a bigger hotspot and is brighter. This makes its spill light brighter as well.

I am really, really lik'n the FT03 mini in SST-40 5000K - beam is a nice consistent white, lots of output, good throw.

Did you get something unsolicited in the mail from China? Maybe unidentified seeds or other junk?

They sprout big pods which suck out your memories and replace your body with a plant-double.

Searched pretty well and coudn’t find this question asked yet:

Whats the purpose of frosting the center of a 3-up or 4-up optic? How does it affect the beam?

Less beam artifacts/smoother beam transitions.

I have a question for those who sand down TIR optics to fit in lights because I sanded mine down to fit into a D10 and it resulted in having a donut hole. How do you guys remedy that or is it now a lost cause?

Hmm, I’ve never heard of that happening. What optic was it, a narrow angle one? I tend to use wide angle ones for close up work. Those usually have a pebble texture finish. You might try raising or lowering the optic to see if that changes the focus.

It was a 60 degree pebbled lens. Similar to this one. . There isn’t a lot of clearance to raise/lower the optic. I wanted to leave the glass lens there since I made the mistake of shaving the diameter a bit too much and is not making a prefect seal in terms of waterproofing.

We have the same mods (I use the glass lens in my D10 also, but no centering ring), but I don’t have a donut hole pattern. You removed the white part, yes?

Maybe your particular optic is the issue. If your in the USA you might try buying this one. A little bit of filing is all it needs and the beam is perfect in my light.

If you’re outside the US and it costs too much to buy from Mountain Electronics, you might just try buying a different brand of optic from AliExpress and see if that fixes the problem.

Yeah I removed the white part, maybe it is the optic. I guess I’ll try to experiment on it since it’s good as broken anyways. Thanks for always answering my questions here JasonWW. Really appreciate it.

Are you both using the same emitter? If an optics behaves well with XM-L2 in particular, it’s often not great with other emitters (in my experience anyway).

I’ve tried it with the stock emitter which is probably an xml2 clone as well as an XPL, nichia 219 and 319. They all gave me a nice smooth pattern.

(EDIT: Oh and the Samsung LH351D as well)

I’ve also fitted these same lenses from MTN E into other lights with good results.