I have small problem on deciding which light should i buy... First I want it to have one 18650 cell. Secund thing is 3or5 modes. And third thing is i want to make thrower from it, not as soon as i get it, but after some time I would like to have thrower from same light. here are some of the lights i was thinking of:
You can use the 28mm optic you referenced from DX along with a blacked-out reflector to convert the WF-501b into a thower. I did so with my XRE-R2 501b with good results. I'm not certain how the XM-L lamps would do though... I would imagine you would get a much larger hotspot with reduced thow but I 've never tried to see how it would work.
For throw you aren't going to beat a XR-E with aspheric. The hotspot will be bigger with a XM-L but the XR-E will throw further.
With most of those lights mentioned you can probably just replace the front lens with the aspheric. It's always a bit of a gamble with various lights as you never know if the focal length will be just right until you try it.
As was mentioned paint out the reflector. If you really want a clean beam also paint out the Cree ring.
Some folks also say mask off all but the center of the aspheric lens with black tape. I've also had another idea but I've not tried it yet. Its effectively an aspheric lens with frosted glass except for the center. The way I intend to try to achieve the effect is with the vinyl used by shop signmakers; the type that when it is stuck to windows it makes the glass translucent/frosted in appearance. I suspect that this may smooth out the problem artifacts in the beam.
thats what I was thinking of. Because I dont need throw now, but later on i may need to get as much throw as i can without giving extra 20-30 $...thats way Im trying to get best combo with some flood flashlight and lens or even head replacment. But I still dont know if there is some head for replacment for it.
Most thrower lights with XRE leds have very narrow beam making the lower modes unusable, I know because I have several thrower lights like the Kaidomain RQ and Solarforce Skyline 1, if you want a do it all light it has to have the balance between flood and throw which only can be achieved by XM-L and big reflector or a Flood to throw lights(aspherics).
This one has more throw than flood https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/2405 It can be had with a 2800 Mh driver by going through Wendy (PM) It has enough spill to make it a good duel purpose light.
