Yup from Amazon to boot. Also wanted to help Jeff Bezos with the upcoming 2 yachts. :laughing:
Anyway I wasn’t expecting much at all when I bought and received this flash a week ago. One of those notta whims/hunches.
Boy was I surprised on the THROW of this TIR type zoomy. No square die when zoomed in either as expected with this type lens. Butt it’s the kinda throw that’s evenly floody yet concentrated. I don’t think this is easy to pull off. Wondering what’ it’ll do dedomed. Either the OSRAM P8 is
greatly underrated or PEETPEN really knows its stuff on configuring a balanced lens to the constraints of a single 18650 in this small head.
The coupon taint bad with 30% off either. I’d say this is a relative bargain and maybe even one of those sorta rare cheaper sleepers BLFers appreciate.
PS. For giggles I attached a reverse rear clicky I had laying about to see if I could kinda have the best of two worlds in conjunction with the side clicker. Sure, why not? :student:
PSS. Hey that OSRAM P8 is german made. When you see German Stuff at this price, ya just buy it. :sunglasses:
PSSS. Screw it. Here ya go Jeff. I just bought another one in case the first one breaks or someone grabs it. Or in case it sells out. This thing is well made all around. With the 30% off coupon was $15.04 out da door including tax and free Prime shipping. Solidly reeeeediculous, man.
PSSSS. I’ve nicknamed it Peety. So I showed my wife as I held it waist high in my right hand. “So whatty think of my impressive Peety?”
Rolls hers eyes……“Well it may be new but I don’t really see any impressive improvements”.
If I didn’t come across your post, I would have never know about this flashlight. I just ordered the same one too from Amazon Canada! :) Will be my first Wuben flashlight and my first Osram led flashlight. :)
I believe this is a Wuben brand.
I see that the L45 is a TIR-based zoomie…these tend to have poor to good throw beams but the intermediate ones tend to be very bad and flood varies from very bad to excellent.
It would be very useful to see some real beam shots
nottawhackjob, could you please help with that?
Sorry Agro butt that’s something I’m not set up to accommodate. I’m sure someone will buy one and give us a stellar review. IMO this has strong enough attributes that for the price it will be tough to beat.
I will venture that the snug rotating focus, the pretty dang good build quality, and especially the fully zoomed-in tightly concentric intensity is its strongest suit. I don’t know what you expect in the full flood mode butt there are in everything of this nature beam imperfections depending on where exactly in the focus rotation you settle in on. I find so far that there are ‘sweet spots’ from fully zoomed-in to zooming-out that give optimum flood qualities subject to inherent compromises in the overall design. I think the TIR type lens in this flash is interesting. I’ve never seen one quite like it. The Osram P8 may not be state of the art today butt it does crank out in this particular set up. Now whether that has something to do with the driver I don’t know. Or if the Osram P8 is just happier with this arrangement in general. Someone earlier mentioned it’s moreso an XP-L HD in similar performance. Not much about the Osram P8/P9 is covered on BLF IIRC. For instance is it dedomable? Does it like being driven hard? Etc.
I think sometimes we want everything in a flash and then when we don’t get it we pick it apart too much for what we’re paying.
I also think if you can, you should get one. You’re the zoomy anointed guru here and it should be in your collection. Absolutely.
I have a hunch it has some serious modding potential too. That lens is impressive.
Sorry the link does not work. I always check any link I post (after I post it) and it still works for me when I click on it now.
Another way to find this video (which shows the beam zooming on a white wall) is to click the link from the first post (copied here for reference) and find the video in the five-star review by "Maserati Corse" from March 27, 2021:
Thanks, Roostre. Besides the video by Maserati Corse, if one looks at his still pic of the lens you can notice a sort of faint “spiraling” imprint. Never seen that before in this type lens. That and the little extra taller typical protrusion of the center leads me to surmise that this lens may be specifically tuned to the Osram. Conjecture only.
One thing that Maserati’s video does accurately show is that when fully zoomed-in it has IMO a very nice clean (without center artifacts) concentrated hotspot which translates into its surprising throw and usable flood.
Again I think this wasn’t all that slam dunk easy to pull off. Mind you this is from a head of only about 1 3/8” in outside diameter with the lens itself at about 1 1/8” diameter.
The anodizing finish quality of this flash belies the price. Really quite smooth hence a nice tactile feel.
I think it’s worth the $15 and then some.
PS. The tight smooth diamond-pattern knurling around the rotating focusing head IMO is pretty dam superb. Just the right texture. Speaking of which the rotating focus design is starting to
grow on me instead of the typical push-pull of most zoomy’s. Big time.
For one thing rotational focus allows greater pinpoint accuracies and less chance of inadvertantly bumping the focus points especially when clip pocketed or holstered. I wish it had come with a pocket clip butt I can add my own by legoing.
Yeah, the throw beam looks nice, intermediate looks as bad as usually.
I have only one TIR zoomie with nice intermediate beam (Coast HP2), most look like that.
Flood…I’m not sure if it has a brigher ring on the outer edge or is it completely smooth? It definitely has a halo around the main beam and I’m not sure whether it’s ringy.
As to the twisty operation, I hate it. I want adjustoment to be as fast as my eye movement and twisties are simply lagging behind.
But this can be fixed, at least one modder (Firelight2) has removed threads from a twisty zoomie before.
The surface “reflective” portion behind the lens is potentially moddable IMO. By further blackening, any ringyness at various focus points could be mitigated.
I think there are negative compromises you have to pay with zoomy’s in general to get watt really turns ya on.
I do think though that this L45 lens deals with them better than many out there and maybe even most. Again the concentric even floody throw is its greatest attribute. If it can be beat
for this head size and price I’m all eyes.
I also believe that short distance camera shots don’t necessarily give one the true picture of practical performance. Lighting up a wall 10 feet away can be IMO deceptive when it comes
to artifacts and in general rings and such that are mostly unavoidable - butt I agree the reality is about the degree of these anomalies. There will always be some.
Some anomalies are a helluva lot worse than others and others just aren’t that big of a deal.
I have one of the L45s on order. It looks like there may be a problem with the charge port on these. 3 reviewers talk about how the battery pushes the charge port out of place making it unusable (with pictures). Hope I get lucky…
Update: Mine arrived and there is no problem with the charge port. Quite happy with this zoomie.
