For the record, even after all of this I am more then willing to work with you to test the sphere and figure out what is going on but it would need to be done scientifically and objectively. This is not that hard but does take some time, math and calculations.
Texas_Ace BLF Calibrated Lumen tube / Sphere No math skills needed - Several spheres still available
I’ve been doing what you’re doing for 2 years, pipes diffusers, straight out ceiling bounce tests, they only work if you’re using the same light. You can’t calibrate a system with one light, it’s utter madness, I use lights that got similar measurements by the likes of Maukka vinh, Advanced knife bro and a few members of Taschenlampe and calibrate until I match those measurements by all flashlights I use, tbh I’ve never ever seen a fluke variation. The Acebeam, Olight and Imalents I prefer seem consistent. I wouldn’t get a measurement from an Aspheric light then smash an X80 against it. The Aspheric light would put all its output directly above the meter and thus give a calibration too high.
You’ve modded a tube until it gives you the exact Fenix output, I’m surprised only I can see the weirdness in this, surely you must have realised a light with 20 times the power and a different beam profile will. provide an all manner of different behaviours on it’s journey through. I honestly belive a 1000 Lumen Fenix would read spot on in your tube I’d just love to see you post honest measurements of a 9000 lumen Fenix.
My throwers expectedly didn’t really gain from sitting on the 1st diffuser, some lost a few. Try it.
Who said I used a single light to calibrate the tube?
A quick history lesson:
I first used Hundreds of lights to “calibrate” the tube for the last few years.
None of the lights agreed on the correct calibration factor so I ended up settling for a calibration in the middle of the numbers and in line with most other readings I saw online. You see the same thing with your ceiling bounce tests, manufacture ratings do not agree because they are not true in most cases.
Turns out that once this calibration was compared with a known good source, aka, muakka, the readings were 32% too high.
I then got a few lights from Muakka to calibrate the sphere and recalibrated it with them
Unlike the past where all the lights disagreed, once calibrated all of his lights agreed and read correctly. This is a sign of a properly working sphere that is linear and properly calibrated.
I and many others then proceeded to test many many other lights and fenix in particular has stood out as a reliable benchmark with the numbers being within margin of error.
I personally do not have any fenix lights nor was a fenix light used for calibration. Why do you keep thinking this? I only ask for fenix numbers because they are the only light that has been consistent across everyone’s elses tubes thus far.
I would happily post fenix numbers if I owned a fenix light. Those are well out of my budget though.
The diffusers are in place specifically due to the fact the beam profiles changing the readings of lights was such a big problem without them in place. After adding them all of the sudden the readings between throwers and flooders matched up.
I tested this heavily and scientifically by running the exact same LED from an external power supply on a massive heat sink with both floody reflectors and very throwy reflectors and getting basically the same readings. Naturally there will be minor differences, I never claimed otherwise but we are talking a few percent change, not 50%.
These sphere are only rated to be +/-5% tolerances for this reason.
How about you order a set of muakka lights and then post the results. that way we can have some truly comparable results. Those or the HDS lights are the only lights I would trust for a calibration and Muakka is a lot more reasonable price.
KG, have you ever worked on cars and tried to diagnose car symptoms? We would first take note of the reported/observed symptoms and determine the most likely causes and work on them. If that doesn’t fix the problem, then we dig deeper into less obvious causes until we pinpoint the root of the problem. Your case with the lumen tube would be similar. From the very limited information you provided, folks here gave you the most likely causes. As you provided more information, it becomes more apparent (at least to me) it is unlikely you can coincidentally have that many lemon lights. That is why we kept asking you to provide us with as much information as possible (more lumen tests, pictures or videos of how you test it, is the aluminum foil on the disc facing down?, did you try removing and reinserting the sensor, etc.). The info you provided us to diagnose the problem is too scarce. You kept telling us why you think it is not working and kept bashing the product, which may have offended some fellow customers/enthusiasts/experts here as I explained in post above. The fact is none of us are experiencing what you are experiencing with the tube (lumen measurements posted by others confirms it) but the way you word things may make it sound like all of TA’s tubes behave like that and all of his customers are too dumb to notice it. TA is a very professional and good guy and if you work with him by giving him the information he needs, he will make it right for you as he have for many others in the past but you need to be cooperative instead of just bashing the guy and his product. Like TA, I also tried to be helpful and posted facts/figures previously in an effort to help figure out the cause of your problems (despite I’m not very technical savvy) and nowhere did I call you any names or attacked you.
I admit I’m a fan of your youtube videos as the beam comparisons are very helpful. However, if you want to be the best flashlight reviewer, having a good personality and professionalism would help you a long ways. Examples are AKB and Going Gear’s Marshall (R.I.P.) are well loved. I havent spoke to Marshall but AKB is very friendly and helpful. I can imagine if they were the ones experiencing your problems, it would have been figured out and resolved by now. TA also earned his respect and reputation in this largest “global” flashlight community with users from all over the world because of his technical contributions and his professionalism. I just think how you are treating him is very unfair.
I mentioned the tube calibrated to a 1000 lumen Fenix several times you never stated other wise.
Like I’ve also said several times I’m confident any sub 5000 lumen light we can aquire will yeild similar results to each other. We managed 203 & 208 for our Cometas. What you need to do is try to whack some 6000 lumen plus lights on it and compare the results to Maukka. Obviously you can’t use a 25,000 lumen Fenix but Maukka, myself and others all hit around 20000-24000 for the X80, 13500-15000 for the X45 and 12500-14000 for the DT70, all these results are under the manufacturer’s spec.
AKB models himself on Jack Dee.
TA has indirectly acknowledged the failing though. He’s stated that the diffusers absord a fixed percentage of light. If that’s 20% then a 1000 lumen Fenix light will read 800 lumens and a 10000 lumen light will read 8000 lumens. That half explains the increased losses as lumens climb. If the lights are floody (and TA has acknowledged tube walls before the 1st diffuser absorb light) then the lights will read 700 and 7000.
I don’t buy the claim Maukka recieves lights that are close to the manufacturer’s ratings and I get sent Ultrafire clones.
A thrower won’t hit the walls before the diffuser with much of it’s spill, a flooder like the X80 will shoot light out at an almost 180 degree angle, this light won’t travel through the diffuser cleanly and will bounce back at the torch and opposing side wall significantly, this is why I get 8000 lumens extra by bypassing the walls and sitting the X80-GT directly on the diffuser, less floody lights don’t get the same gains percent wise. This has nothing to do with being a certified light, TA could do the same test and it will get the same result.
The Cometa is a puzzle though, it really doesn’t like the tube. It’s really got me scratching my head.
KG, TA has gone above and beyond to help you. You agreed to a refund to make the situation right. You got your refund. NOW JUST GO AWAY . The rest of us a REALLY sick of your senseless drivel. JUST GO AWAY.
This is a long post I know, please read it all as it sums up few key points.
Here is the first quote I could find that I made about this, pretty sure I mentioned it a few other times as well.
Even a 7800 lumen light matches up very well, in fact you got higher readings.
There was also a comparison to one of Muakka’s tests around 7k lumens with one of your lights that matched up nearly perfectly with a floody light but I can’t find it right now.
It is simply not logical to see all of these numbers match up so well and then somehow think that a 16k rated light can somehow read 8k lumens due to the sphere when you already showed it reads pretty darn good up to 7800 lumens with another light.
When you see numbers like this we can’t throw out the majority in favor of the few.
Now some of the larger lights do seem to be reading less then they should but outside factors make a whole lot more sense then the sphere magically changing the entire calibration by 50% for 1 light.
Add to all of this the fact that your comparison to your ceiling bounce numbers prove that the sphere is actually more linear then your ceiling bounce numbers that you compared it to And maybe you can understand why I am having a hard time believing that the issue is with the sphere. The data simply does not point to the sphere as being the issue.
All the individual data-points provided say it is reading within reason on the lights that can be compared.
It is also reading linearly so that the readings should remain correct as lumens go up
And that there is no major discrepancy between flooders and throwers shown by getting matching readings with both.
When we know all of this, it is quite a stretch to say the equipment is at fault when a few higher power lights, that are known for being underrated, don’t get the numbers expected.
The fact is that this sphere is really very simple, there is nothing about it that should change as lumens go up, it should read with the same calibration regardless of the lumen output of the light.
A fixed and known percentage of the light is absorbed by the diffusers to match the calibration standard (aka, the muakka lights). There is nothing variable about it, it simply is what it is. Even professional spheres work on this same exact principal.
For example Muakka sphere is calibrated with a 110 lumen calibration lamp IIRC and so are most other professional spheres. They might take a reading with a lower powered standard to confirm linearity (Just like I do with my multiple lights) but they are not using 10k lumen standard light sources to calibrate these spheres. It is simply not practical or needed.
The losses and ratios are fixed and don’t change with different light outputs.
See if we can have an educated discussion on the matter we might be able to track down what is happening. :+1:
I responded to you before saying TA didn’t calibrate his tube to Fenix lights and his tubes are calibrated to Maukka’s reference lights. I think I remember TA answering the same way. If you read this whole thread, you will fully understand how the TA’s tube is calibrated.
Also, when the first batch of TA tube was shipped out to about 3 dozen of us here, we reported back that the tube was measuring much too high and TA never tried to refute our claims. But none of us were rude about it and many members here contributed alot of data for the fix. It took a few months but we resolved the problem in a very friendly and constructive fashion, when the end decision was for TA to calibrate his tubes to Maukka’s reference lights. TA also sent us repair kits for free (although many of us offered to cover his shipping cost out of appreciation). You can read all about it in this thread. That’s why when you just came out of nowhere and start bashing the product instead of working out the issues in a cooperative manner like we all have, some members might find that offensive, which led to some name calling. However, as I said it is completely unfair for you to attribute that to TA.
BTW, have you tried this simple method suggested by Maukka to diagnose. If the relative differences between your ceiling bounce measurement and TA tube measurements are consistent, then that means we can rule out your concern that TA tube is much more unreliable for high output lights. If the relative differences are not consistent, then that is good data for us and we need to figure out why.
You should also read Maukka’s post here that may help you understand how the light tube works and you concern about calibration.
You should really spend the money to buy a Maukka calibration light. It’s very reasonably priced and I am already on his preorder list. That way you can scientifically prove whether there’s a problem with your unit and surely TA will help you fix it like he has with ours originally.
Did you read my above post on this? You might of missed it in the long post a few posts up. It is working exactly how it was designed.
It absorbing a fixed percentage of light is by design, the number is closer to 80-90% if I had to guess BTW, I don’t have any numbers from before adding the discs with the calibration lights though.
The entire point of these spheres is that you don’t have to do the math on paper and they remove the beam shape from the equation.
The diffusers allow for this to happen by adding in the correction factor (something around 80-90% as a rough guess) without you having to break out a calculator.
This is not a failing or a problem, it is the entire reason they work at all and this is how ALL spheres work. They all have losses and they simply calibrate the spheres to the final setup.
Without the discs it would read about 5x+ as much as it does now. The discs are what makes it read correctly.
This is why a sphere is only as good as the standard used to calibrate it. You MUST have a trustworthy standard for calibration to work. Which is why we keep asking for Fenix or muakka numbers.
Why do you think this? This is not the case in the slightest.
He gets normal lights that are consistent and then measured them on his professional sphere.
That is the key, he then sends a lumen sheet along with the light letting you know exactly how many lumens it is putting out based on his professional sphere setup.
You can then use this light as a calibration source for another sphere, exactly the same way it is done professionally with ANSI spheres.
Your statement is completely False as well as misleading KG_Tuning!
Texas_Ace stated almost five days ago he did not own a Fenix light.
Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:53……… #906
Right then why do all my 6000+ lumen lights measure approx 40-50% less than Maukka’s on your tube?
For example he’s managed 22300 for the X80 I get 15000.
Maukka is nearly hitting 16,000 Lumens at turn on with the X45, I’m managong a little over 10,000.
You can’t keep saying “manufacturer’s lie” as an excuse for everyone’s low readings then sell some more tubes.
We’ve both been asking each other relentlessly about each other’s 1000 lumen Fenix light.
Ironic neither of us have one.
As I said, These readings do not many a lot of sense but you can’t throw out all the other readings to justify these. They can’t both be right, it just doesn’t work that way.
A ~10% discrepancy, that I could maybe understand, it would be strange but possible.
A 50% discrepancy within a 25% output change on the other hand, that is just not logical.
Particularly when you add in the fact that the sphere was already shown to read linear with the ceiling bounce comparison. If there was a problem with it reading lower as lumens went up, this would be seen across the entire lumen output range, not only above 8k lumens.
That just can’t happen without some kind of active component to the sphere, which there is nothing remotely like that.
Can you please take a picture of you testing both of these lights? Including shots of the lux meter so I can see the settings it is set on. It is possible I suppose for the meter to have some kind of issue with a higher range of output but it would be a first.
We need to break it down to the details and go from there.
We will start off with double checking to make sure the sphere is being used properly. You most likely are using it correctly but this is the simplest explanation and thus should be the first thing ruled out.
Always start with the simple items and then work your way to the more complicated things.
Look I don’t care if a thousand Fenix lights all measure 1000 lumens on this tube, my point is a 1000 lumen Fenix light will read a 1000 lumens and a floody 10000 Fenix light will read 7000 lumens.
That said the same Fenix lights will test 1200 if Maukka tested them. (diffuser/pre diffuser losses)
This is why I recommend using the refund I sent you to buy a light from Muakka, it is a lot cheaper then fenix and more precise anyways since each individual light is measured.
No matter what you need something like that (Or a $1000 professional standard light) to calibrate anything you use for measuring lights.
I’ve not seen anyone post a measurement yet that Maukka wouldn’t get higher than.
Sit your lights on a diffused tube opening and lose 1 diffuser and you’ll be closer to Maukka’s results. Trust me.
:person_facepalming: … More False & misleading statements. :person_facepalming: