What are the advantages/drawbacks of an aspheric lens vs a smooth reflector?
Aspherics:
- way less spill, really no spill if done right. This could be a big advantage for some uses, like in tactical situations, not blinding animals/people out of the hot spot AOI (Area Of Interest), not bothering neighbors, etc.
- for me, way easier to mount a non-standard size LED - no worry bout the LED retainer ring fitted to the reflector, etc.
- if it's an adjustable zoom, when the lens is drawn in, they tend to have a real nice consistent spill/flood, way better than TIR, reflectors, multi-LED's, etc.
- of course there's a price: much less lumens in either full zoom out for throw, zoom in for flood. The flood setting is higher lumens.
- Adjustable zoom aspherics are really two lights in one - a flooder and thrower
- hot spot tends to mimic the shape of the LED, so hot spot is typically a square
I'm not sure what throws further given same head diameter - this 1504 is a 70 mm head diam and getting 500+ kcd - not sure how that compare with true thrower reflector lights. An FT03 is rated at 69.5 mm head diam, 875 meters, 190 kcd throw for the SST-40 model. Dedomed SST-40 should be close to 400 kcd, if these numbers are legit. I assume the throw #'s between aspherics and reflectors are close, depending on the quality of the lens or reflector.
Were the measurements taken at turn on or 30s?
Either way 500Kcd is pretty impressive. Hopefully the FT03 can hit those numbers. SST40 FT03 goes from 235 to 367 after dedome according to tm07. If it’s possible for Luminus to make an LED which outthrows the XHP35 HI/SST40 whilst putting out more than twice the light, I wonder what kind of performance they could get from a smaller version with half the output.
Lumens I'll do at turn on and 30s, but throw, 540 kcd is probably taken aggressively. I did do amps measurements first, and didn't take the highest reading asap - it's all about finding that peak, so sometimes it takes a few secs. This aspheric hot spot is like other aspherics - you got to hunt for it. For this LED/light at 5 m, the brightest spot seemed to be on the edge of the square - you can actually see it change. Like at 1-2 meters, it seems the hot spot is center, but then as you go further away, the edges get hot. Probably best to take it at 10+ meters. I still don't have a clear focused image of the LED surface so I don't think it's fully focused for the best #.
I know the Pearl River and live near it. 