Yeah, its always a trade off between either a tight beam or compactness.
Impossible to have both because you can’t shrink a light source, only move your optics further away.
Mentioning catadioptrics reminded me of the Carclo ones I have, and I started thinking about whether it is possible to make something similar using reflectors only, similar to a telescope with primary and secondary mirrors.
That would allow placing the light source behind the primary reflector, shining onto a small center reflector before bouncing into the main parabola.
I am not sure if a spherical convex mirror would suffice, it might have to be hyperbolic or some other more complex shape to get the focus right.
Also the benefit of easier cooling/mounting is offset by the losses in the secondary mirror, so a multi-stage design might not be worth the effort.
I also searched for a long time and considered various mirascopes, makeup mirrors, etc. but never found something of sufficient quality for a good beam.
That’s why I had to go with electroformed for my last project.
As the focal length is longer, it becomes easier to focus light, as you found with fresnel lenses.
They can be plastic or pretty cheaply manufactured and still work well.
However a mirascope mirror has a few cm focal length is very close to the light source and any imperfections will result in huge aberrations.
This is also why large NA lenses are so hard to make and expensive.
Yup, and according to my estimates they have made another big leap forward in intensity performance with the new Black Flat X, which nobody has tested yet.
Might need to buy one and test it myself
