Oh damn, all of their carclo optics are out of stock. They are the only reasonable source of these optics in the US, I wonder if they will restock them.
(EDIT: they don’t do free shipping anymore! Also not all are out of stock, some are still available.)
Glad that the diffusion film does the trick! With ultra-high-CRI lights I would not tint mix or overdrive them, both of them compromise CRI and the ability to see colors objectively. If I wanted a really rosy tint I’d just get 519As, which have more output anyways.
As tempting as it would be to try the 10509 optics that I can get from MTN, I’ve decided to keep my set-up as is.
Here’s my rationale:
I don’t see any tint shift with them. Even when I rotate the flashlights on a white wall, there is no noticeable change that I can see.
I like that they have a distinct hotspot and I’m not sure if that would be the case with the 10509 optic.
They have older 6x7135 12 mode Convoy drivers that I’ve added bleeder resistors to in order to accommodate lighted switches. I’m afraid that the firmware could become compromised if I removed a 7135 chip or 2.
I’ve decided to program them to mode 8 in order to reduce the current by 50% just to be safe. This should then be around 0.375A per LED which is still plenty bright.
Yeah, it sucks they don’t ship for free anymore. $3.99 plus the cost of the optics is still cheaper than Digikey, Mouser or Mtnelectronics though.
Both very good points. The 3V SunLike only make ~20lm at the normal drive current, which is a bit low even for three of them. I was pretty much just playing around with mixing different temps. My preferred CCT is ~4500K so I also tried a mix of 2 4000K and 1 5000K that came out pretty much perfectly neutral and ~4200K. I’ll probably settle on a mix of 2 5000K and 1 4000K.
