I agree. I contacted them and got a reply that price for 3 was around 88usd + 40 for international shipping. :/
Does any fellow budget flashaholic live near that shop perhaps? (i know the longshot but doesen't hurt to ask)
I would gladly send the required money (via paypal) for 2 of those plus other expenses he has to acquire and send them to me ...
Can't find that thing enywhere else.
The support stuff wanted to have me pay around 120usd for three shipped internetionally... I much rather go and buy a Tk35. >.>
If the led would eventually suck i could probably mod it to something better.
yeeehaaa .... group buy ;-)
Update:
The paypal dispute i made with neverbuying is as expected, going nowhere. They are clearly stalling by replying with substantial delay with different responses which are often totally unrelated. The english is good this time but without being of any help. I don't mind if i get a good resolution on the case or not since i prepared myself for the worse. It does just confirm that the dealer is still comitted to the BLF budget dealer given rating. Eventual buyers beware!
The flashlight may be cute (actually is way more cute than good) but is not really worth the trouble from this seller. Let's not support sellers which are damaging business to decent sellers. I will not for sure.
And just when i was about to show this tiny light to a friend it dies... permanently. I checked it a hour ago and determined that switch and led were fine. This leaves the driver wihich is some rare thing and any attempts to fix it would be in vain. I would still stand by my review but would love to give this one a -5 star rating for liftime expectancy.
Sorry to hear that but on the bright side you can use it as a cute paperweight. 
I managed to have it working again for a minute and when i switched the battery would not light up unles with heave uncrewing and screwing back the tailcap. It must be a negative connection form the pill to the negative on the driver that causes this. I'll fix it during the weekend but surely this flashlight has an evil mind on its own.
Here is a profile plot taken along a line extending from the top left corner to the bottom right. The ring is clearly seen as the two peaks at the top.
If Budgeteer had been able to give us a reading from a light meter for a single point within the hotspot the units on the vertical axis could be real lux rather than just relative values. Also if there had been some reference scale in the image the horizontal axis could be in cm. Then there would be enough information to find the beam angle in degrees.
The next image shows lines of equal brightness, again in relative units of brightness. The island surrounded by the black 475 contour corresponds to the higher of the two peaks in the profile plot.
The contours nicely illustrate the broad uniform beam this light projects, probably very similar to the UF-H2. My own UF-H2 died shortly after it arrived and I don't have a beamshot to compare with.
I should add that once you have a contour plot like this one with real lux and real physical dimensions then it's easy to get a fairly accurate total OTF lumen value as the next step.
What I've written is in no way meant to be a criticism of Budgeteer or anyone else. His wall shot just happens to be among the more interesting on this site and also of excellent quality.
I just wanted to point out that there is a huge amount of valuable inforrmation hidden within the lowly wall shot, if done properly and by including some extra information. Can we call it the Technical Wall Shot?
Perhaps if the TWS catches on here it could be yet another feature that distiguishes BLF from other forums. Just a thought.
Cheers,
Angus
Hi angus,
It is courious that a half assed picture with an even more subpar camera gets that kind of appreciation. I truly belive i managed to make it "that good" by mistake more than anything. :P
If you tell me what i managed to do right i'll be happy to do it in the future. :)
All i did was to fiddle with camera settings and took like 20 pictures. Then i choose the best looking/sharp one and deleted the rest.
Two things right;
- you mentioned the distance was 1.0 m
- the image wasn't overexposed
To get an 'A' you could have included some kind of reference object or line so that we could have a better idea of the beam width.
To get an 'A+' the exposure could have been about 2/3 to 1 stop higher.
In too many wallshots the hotspot is badly overexposed. When that happens you lose important information. It's better to be under than to be even a hair over.
Cheers,
Angus
Thanks for the heads up.
I was unable to repair the SS-004. The circuit is probably messed up. Driver swap might do but i'm unaware for drivers that work with momentary switches. It is a good looking paperweight now. This flashlight has potential but the design/assembly have to be tought better.
Update as of 30 april 2011:
The flashlight went back from the dead. Not on it's own but with a substantial help. Required through disassembly, cleaning, wires change, and complete soldering rework of the driver along with all other contacts. 1h of work.
But now works as it is intended. Still the way it's built it might come to have to redo the soldering or even rework it so it lasts better.
If anyone has a quirky one i suggest to take it apart throughly and redo it from scratch. Switch included. It's not worth the time and effort if youre not doing it for fun. The flashlight regarding build quality is to be considered a unreliable design. That along with the inability to use those 2mm longer protected 16340 are the major cons.
But nothing and i say nothing (well the big grin shark engraved thing might) can take the cuteness factor away from it.
I might even get to LCK-LED and buy a 1.5USD warm white osram to replace the stock one with.
After being on the back burner for months i finally managed to revive this POS light otherwise good looking one. The switch is gone and became twist activated. Same osram emitter and used an 3xAMC single mode driver, with one amc peeled off. The driver was sanded down from 17mm to 15mm to be able to fit in the pill. I wouldn't have bothered otherwise but space is an issue. A protected cell 16340 (flame trustie) barely fit and cannot be screwed down completely. Lacks 1mm. Anyway, works and by turning half a cricle shuts it off. Should draw around 600mA which is more than enough for the tinly lamp and the 16340. Would be perfect for the famous QTC but didn't bothered don to get some. To install it i will have to mod the pill by sanding it further down and i belive it will be quite annoying without proper tools. So it's an on off i really like. Unfortuntely the plastic lens went a bit opaque in the time being and causes some minor light loss. I like it now anyway. No strobe! :) &cm in length and its really a small cutie around 100lm. Doesen't even get worrying hot now. I'm expecting around 60-70min of decent runtime.