Why not EDC adjustable focus?

I have only played with a couple zoomies , they do take up more space for there size. I remember reading somewhere you loose out the front lumens also.

I have been looking for a cheap side switch host. Most of the overseas sights are full of zoomies.

I stopped dropping my phones in water when I got a waterproof one.

There are some really cheap AA zoomies and Harley Quinn and wight are working up an at tiny controlled boost driver or put a BLF15DD in one instead. I don’t know of any side clicky zoomies though.

Look at Suprabeam:

Their Q1mini is one of my EDCs, it works fine for small tasks, and the variable focus is really good. But they are rather pricey, it’s a Danish company…

I haven’t found a zoomie that I have liked yet.

- Fully zoomed out, they cast a “blah” beam of unfocused nothingness. I like my beams to be brighter where I’m looking and less bright where I’m not looking.

- Fully zoomed out, their field of illumination is much narrower than most standard flashlights. And the cutoff at the periphery is a distinct shadow line. My eyes tend to be distracted by the abrupt cutoff.

- Fully zoomed in, most zoomies have an annoying “space invaders” LED die image. (Some manufacturers don’t allow you to zoom all the way in, to avoid this issue.)

- Fully zoomed in, there’s little spill to illuminate anything in the periphery.

It is a matter of preference
My wife has the first flashlight that arrived as EDC
A cheap bronze colored using a 18650
Edges of the beam are green light it reaches 50m, has no memory and two annoying blinky modes.
Yet how much my son and I point out the weaknesses, no matter what other light of decent quality we present, she just wants this, the lack of hotspot and looks are her reasons. She doesn’t mind clicking past the blinky blinky and actually uses it on a daily basis, so go figure

An EDC zoomie can be very useful, but a good, compact and affordable one has not been made yet. Most zoomies are ultra-budget and have a terrible led and very poor optical design (how easy is to make a slider with broad flood and good focus?, and they all fail), and usually way too much aluminium is used. And it is easy to make it adequately waterproof, not submergable under pressure but perfectly rainproof.

That Lenslight looks good (don’t know about the optical design), something like that can be be made much cheaper and still be good.

The led should be a narrow beam one like the old XR-E or better an Oslon SSL80 (bonus: it comes in a wide variety of tints and CRI :slight_smile: )

I rebuilt this very cheap but compact AA zoomie with a latest ssl80 led (4000K 92CRI), it is very nice as an edc. For a budget zoomie the flood is relatively broad, but the build quality leaves enough to desire, I had to modify quite a lot (switch, driver) to make it bright and reliable.

Wight said it well. As far as I’ve seen, small zoomies are a concept that has yet to be made decently.

Perhaps it’s impossible to “have it all” in one light with the technology we have now. A reflector that changes shape would seem to be the ideal solution to achieve a perfect flood, throw, and everything in between if it could only be done.

Phil

Thanks for all the help, my hopes have been gently let-down. :slight_smile: Maybe in the near future someone within the BLF will figure out how to shape-shift a reflector (phils suggestion) which is a first for me but I’m all for it! I really like the idea.

I agree, the convoy BD04 IMO would be an ideal host. I have had the Convoy 365nm for several weeks and immediately tried to purchase it in white light, but it wasn’t available. The overall quality and small size is impressive for an 18650 and the zoom movement is quality smooth. If I was able to switch out the emitter myself I would. Hmm, are there any builders that are recommended and available to discuss this with? I would like to arrange a build :slight_smile:

Thanks again all.

The Trustfire Z8 looks good but never was very popular.
SS 14500 zoomie with a XML.
I have one that just sits on the shelf.
Z8

BD04 is available in white tints but they are XML2, in my limited experience I found that the smaller LEDs produced a nicer narrow beam with less spill, but my sample size is small and as mentioned experience limited.

Swapping out an emitter is a two wire affair . it took trained chimps 11 minutes to figure it out.you can absolutely master it . If you refuse to try then there are a 1000 people living within 10 miles of you that can do a two wire solder job in 34 seconds and would gladly take 10$ from you .look for a radio tech ,ham radio ,cb shop ,stereo or a computer kid and just ask .Easier to just do it yourself . it ain’t rocket science …Folding clothes is tougher .
Try Zeusray or a supfire F3-L2, both have very large patterns when in flood modes.

The Trustfire z8 is crap, too heavy, too small lens for the size, any sk68 clone has a better optical lay-out.

I still have to mod it to get the best out of it, but I like the Supfire F5 as a compact 18650 zoomie.

I have to say I find zoomy lights very useful and don’t wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.

They have specific uses, so this means they are not a jack of all trades, but that’s the entire point.

I also have seen zoomy lights easily out flood and out throw fixed reflector lights.

A nice comparison is a POP lite T33 with a claim 200 or so lumens from an XP-E (running on 3xAAA too) and a p60 with an XM-L SMO reflector and 600 lumens+ (I know more modern LEDs can easily make more).

But the fact remained, for about the same physical size, the POP lite could illuminate things at a greater distance and could light stuff up better close up. It of course couldn’t do both at the same time.

On a similar note, I find I use my POP lite T22 (essentially a last gen Led Lenser P5) a lot, despite owning many more powerful lights. It runs on a NiMh AA too, but is more versatile than an Olight S15 running a 14500.

The Zeusrays mentioned already. I can’t say they are “high quality lights”, because they aren’t. But they are good. I have 3 of them. And they are my ‘go to’ lights for working on vehicles.

I have a Z8, it’s ok really. The stock emitter was too blue and the driver a little annoying. But apart from that it does what is expected of it.

I used to run a Nichia219A in mine until I broke the emitter faffing with it. It now runs an XB-D I think. Which actually isn’t a bad tint at all.

I agree ‘today’ it’s nothing really to write home about. It’s heavy and gets hot with the stock driver. But it’s well built and solid and I use mine more than I use my SK68’s. Albeit I admit I don’t really use any of these that much these days, I have newer better lights.

Ummm, did you post in the wrong thread? I didn’t know we were talking about emitter swapping. :stuck_out_tongue:

IMHO, you’re almost right about how easy it is to change an emitter. Learning to solder is a prerequisite. I tried for a VERY long time to figure out soldering. It seemed so simple, I thought it should be easy to learn. It wasn’t. But, there are some great tips lying around in various places on BLF that helped me get there. I can now solder wires onto emitter pads successfully! And even before I was very good at it, I was swapping emitters, cuz that’s the easy way to practice. :wink:

Full disclosure: All my brains are in my head. I suck at mechanical things or anything that requires hand work. YMMV.

I tend to think of “zoomies” (the category) as being like the SRK’s in that there is so much more potential that could be tapped. I truly believe that it is technically possible to make a good zoomie. It’s just that it isn’t being done. It can be designed so that the slide mechanism goes further back and further out. In that case, a high quality lens with a longer focal point could be used to give the most output in both zoomed in and zoomed out modes. A small die emitter might be great for a pencil beam, but that’s not very useful to most people really. And those small die LED’s don’t give enough lumens to be useful in flood mode either. I’d be okay with a XP-G2 driven hard but I think better would be a de-domed XM-L2 or a XP-L HI for high output. With a longer focal point lens, the die image won’t be too huge when zoomed in. If we really want to maximize output, a light recycling collar should be added. But, that would limit how close the lens can be to the die for flood mode.

To move in a different direction, what about considering a reflector zoomie instead? The whole reflector/head assembly can be slid up and down like a regular zoomie. Pulling it out would put the reflector at the perfect focal point for throw. Pushing it back would clear the reflector away from the emitter and make the light basically a mule. This with a XM-L2 de-domed or a XPL HI might be the best we can get in the zoomie category. The reflector could be SMO for tightest throw or OP for those who prefer a softer beam edge. Of course, the throw of a reflector couldn’t compare to a perfect die image from a quality lens. But, who needs to see a square die with tiny dots all over it being projected onto whatever they’re trying to look at?

That wouldn’t work, because to move the reflector behind the LED, the LED has to be mounted on a kind of pole, which would dramatically limit the transport of heat away from the LED.

Simple: EDC two flashlights. One wide and the other narrow.

Indeed it would limit heat dispersal. But I’m not sure it’s always the big deal it’s made to be. Copper DTP is a must for higher output, but not every light needs to be a hot rod to make it a good usable light.

Maglites essnetially do this anyway. But it really is more of a “focus” than a “zooming” mechanism. And a reflector based thrower will always have a spill beam. Also moving the LED out of focus may yield a more flood looking beam, but the reality is, all it usually does is make the beam ringy and less total output, if you move the LED below the reflector.

What I’d like to see is an adaptive reflector. I think it’d never offer the same OTF lumen ability, but if you could somehow have a reflector that you could change it’s shape (wider and/or deeper), while probably keeping the LED stationary, then you might be able to get some interesting beam dynamics from it.

I’m not sure how it’d work, either by some kind of sliding plate system that folds out to make the reflector bigger. Or maybe a flexible material such as some kind of highly polished plastic like foil.