We need data. All this is just talk so far. I wish I had and knew how to use a Lux meter. It would be so easy to try it out. I have both reflector types for my Convoy S2 XP-G2 S4 MtnFet+1. Maybe I could try setting the camera up and do white wall beam shots.
Give me a few weeks. Really busy lately with my first born just a month old now.
Lots of good arguments in here. I like it.
Extreme lack of sleep and irritability?
Congrats on the new addition. Make the most of him/her as they dont stay babies long. 
I think PflexPro found that instead of 526 meters of calculated throw from a SMO reflector, it went down to 518 meters with an orange peel reflector… I think that is an amount I can live with. Up close, who doesn’t want a smoother transition from the melt-a-cat hotspot to the edge-of-the-beam-that-you-make-your-face-scary-with-when-you-hold-it-under-your-chin part… I know it makes actually using the light up close a lot easier for me….
O-Range-peel, O-Range-peel, O-Range-peel…. No one wants to chant with me LOL, what I love about flashlights, you can make them what YOU want…
That’s actually not a big difference. Then you can just pick whatever you want for spot type without sacrificing much at all.
I’m guessing this was tested on a C8?
What if the reflector was a lot smaller like in a tube light? Would the change be more there?
PFlexPro makes awesome P60 stuff, so I’m sure that’s what his test was done on. He’s even got this really cool half-n-half reflector for P60 that’s smooth at the top but gently “frosted” down near the base that gives the best of both worlds - max reflectivity up high but a smooth hotspot with no artifacts around it. Cool stuff.
http://www.pflexpro.com/ is his website but he’s around here a lot too. Searching that name should turn up lots of fun info.
I wonder why the Hybrid reflectors haven’t taken off yet, Orange peel near the reflector and smooth at the edges… Kind of best of both worlds!
Here is an example, credit goes to Lightreviewers.com
The Convoy C8 I got has a smooth reflector.
I have two identical S2s (XML2 U4) and both produced the same amount of light with the stock OP reflectors. I put an SMO reflector in one and compared them side by side. The SMO was noticeably brighter and the beam profile showed only a slightly sharper corona on a white wall. In normal use there’s no noticeable image difference other than being brighter. I think the S2 reflector is too small to need OP and will never have a sharp hot spot. The C8 or any larger reflector is a different story.
Both my S2s now have SMO so I can’t take a side by side snapshot to show how much brighter they got but it was pretty significant. Whether they gained lumens or not, I can’t say but I’m sure the lux increased without appearing more throwy. That said, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference if you only have one light unless you measure it.
On a white wall a smooth reflector will always “appear” noticeably brighter, but that’s just the intense hot spot talking. Never trust your eyes, you can’t believe a thing they tell you.
If you eyes can talk you have bigger problems :bigsmile:
From: Ongoing project: reflector testing
“And that an OP reflector throws about as well as a smooth one is correct for bigger leds, but it fails to throw with a small led.”
Yes, but unlike a large SMO, the S2 doesn’t get the sharp “spot” or artifacts in the corona. Just a brighter center that blends seamlessly into spill. OP doesn’t do much for it except dim down the center.
Which SMO are you using? The SMO I got from Simon (which I believe are the same ones on FT) has a smaller opening and only fits XP size LEDs.
Using this SMO with XP-L emitters, my experiences are very different. The SMO has a very defined hotspot while the OP has a hazy undefined hotspot. I don’t have a S2 with a OP to compare, but I have a host on the way. I’ll take comparison pics when it comes in.
Also, to my eyes the SMO throws noticeably better. However the difference in reflectors is not just SMO vs OP…the SMO reflector is also shaped differently than the OP one.
In an ideal world with a point light source, an SMO reflector will produce a beam that is almost all hot spot, with the spill being those few light rays that never reflect off the reflector. Hence the deeper the reflector the smaller the spill. As the light source gets larger, more of the light rays are emitted away from the focus, and thus become part of the spill rather than the beam (hot spot). Using an OP reflector is one way to get some of those rays back towards the main beam, smoothing out the transition between beam and spill, and tending to make the beam a little larger.
In the real world, especially for smaller manufacturers, it may be as simple as not wanting to have to deal with more than one type of reflector. They may need the quantity to get the price they need for a single type of reflector, whether it be smooth or orange peel. I have run into cases where only one reflector was available. An example is the Mountain Electronics CUXP/CUXM drop in. It is available with either an XM-L2 or a Nichia 219B emitter. The XM-L2 is available with either reflector, but the 219B is only available with OP. Now, this is a very nice drop in, and I really like the beam, so I have no complaints, but it is an example of where no choice is offered.
! Bingo !
OP reflectors were standard for most manufacturers unless specify with large orders until the recent demand for smooth reflector throwers.
“In an ideal world with a point light source, an SMO reflector will produce a beam that is almost all hot spot, with the spill being those few light rays that never reflect off the reflector. Hence the deeper the reflector the smaller the spill. As the light source gets larger, more of the light rays are emitted away from the focus, and thus become part of the spill rather than the beam (hot spot). Using an OP reflector is one way to get some of those rays back towards the main beam, smoothing out the transition between beam and spill, and tending to make the beam a little larger.”
An ideal point source would produce a tighter spot with the spill produced by the remaining cone that misses the reflector. As the light source gets larger the spot widens as the rays emitted from different parts of the led are no longer reflected exactly parallel. To counteract this you can increase the size of the reflector. The percentage of emitted light that hits the reflector is dependent on the emittion pattern of the led and the optical effect of the dome. The main beam is already the sum of what hits the reflector, the OP coating just spreads it out. If it doesn’t hit the reflector then it’s spill regardless of coating type unless it’s that small percentage already emitted along the reflectors axis.
My finest flashlight has a faceted (TIR) reflector instead of orange peal. Some directional light bulbs are also faceted.
A useful way to think about throw, which I haven’t seen talked about in this thread, is I=LA, where I is the luminous intensity of the flashlight, in cd, L is the luminance of the LED, in cd/mm^2, and A is the apparent area. I learned this from Dr Jones thread on this subject:Flashlight Optics - Dome, Dedoming and Throw
When you hold the flashlight at arm’s length and look into the head and see the yellow color of the phosphor filling the reflector surface, that is the apparent area in the above equation. An OP reflector will generally reduce the apparent area. If you look very closely at an OP reflector, you will sometimes see that the yellow phosphor doesn’t fill the area uniformly; it is not fully saturated with the yellow. Some of the crests and ridges in the reflector are not reflecting the LED surface.
Djozz’s test results quoted above are interesting. The result was that for small LEDs an OP reflector significantly reduced throw compared to a smooth reflector, but there was not much of a difference in throw for a large LED.
With the above ideas in mind about apparent area, my hypothesis to explain djozz’s results is that for the small LED, the crests and ridges of the OP reflector changed the effective focal point of the reflector enough to “miss” the LED surface. This would reduce the apparent area. But for a large LED the deviations were not large enough to “miss” the LED surface and the apparent area stays intact.
Or maybe small LEDs already approximate a point source so a SMO reflector cannot be improved upon, only diminished by the scattering of the OP.