Just wondering if you could make max flood and throw light in a single unit. I’ve not seen this done before, although I guess someone must have tried it out.
I think TIR or aspheric optics could be used, probably TIR as you don’t project the LED shape and don’t lose lumens on max zoom.
Anyhow the idea is a triple emitter light, with each LED having it’s one lens.
1 should be set to max flood
1 should be set to max throw
1 should be half way between the too
I guess you could use more emitters and lenses if size isn’t an issue. But something the size of three SK68’s running off of an 18650 or 26650 wouldn’t be so big.
Wouldn’t such a light offer up lovely bright spill/flood with max throw and good mid range?
Maybe.. but you still have the problem of a too bright hotspot right in front of you that will blind you. Also, if you illuminate things right in front of you very bright, you wont see far because your eye will adapt..
If you find a driver to power the 3 LEDs independently, that could be useful.. but that would not be handy, so you could just use two lights right away. :P
What you try to achieve may be more easily achieved with just one emitter in a reflector light. I noticed that most (smooth) reflectors are as parabolic as possible to direct all the light that is hitting it to a as small as possible discrete hot spot (for that reflector size), but some seem to be curved deliberately different to smear the light more out so that the light is gently faded out from the center towards the edge of the beam. This is different from what orange peel finishing of a reflector does (namely: just diffusing the hot spot).
I expect the Thrunite Ti reflector to be (apart from having an orange peel surface) not exact parabolic, because the hotspot is much less discrete as the similarly sized ITP A3 with the same led (XP-E) and same amount of orange peel. Also the Xeno-03 seems to behave like that (no scientific research done!).
So with reflectors you can play around with curvature, texture and also led positioning to achieve almost any type of discrete to smooth beam.
I agree that a zoomie 3-up would be interesting. LEDLenser uses TIRs for all their zoomies, and the SIPIK SK68 is a well touted aspheric zoomie, but I can’t remember seeing any multiemitter zoomies of either style.
Oh I think I misunderstood. So you want all three of them fixed heads, each of the three heads in one of the described modes, one flood, one zoom, and one half&half, so that when you have all three on, you get flood, mid-range, and throw. I’m sure I haven’t seen anything like that around.
Matteaus p60 triple nichia dropin that was sold in cpf had 4 or 5 choices on the optic, and it was swappable. That to me seems like a simpler way of getting the beam profile you want. Wouldn’t be a thrower.
I’d love a triple Sipik sk68 18650, zoom each one different as the mood suits you.
This was my idea for a Balder contest, but none of us received our prizes and Balder removed all threads on cpfmp
I think an aspheric or two aspherical lenses in line, surrounded by mule style led’s and maybe a red led for night vision would be awesome
You are basically trying to simulate a normal flashlight (a maxed zoom to provide a hotspot and maxed flood for the spill). Actually with 2 levels of spill.
I just dont see the point. A light needs to be useful and throwy lights and floody lights have totally different purposes. I dont want a freaking DEFT thrower to try to work around the house or go for a walk…Id get blinded by the hotspot.
Thats kind of the point of flood to throw lights. They are versatile. However in throw mode they are usually too weak to really be great throwers that let you see way off.
What I’d like to see is a triple barrel XM-L2 flood to throw light. Each barrel has its own Zoom lens and all 3 zoom mechanisms are tied together so they all move as 1. You could turn a ring or just push and pull.
This way youd have tons of flood to really light up an area with no hotspot making a great work light,etc. But you would also have incredibly throw (relative to most zoomies). Wouldnt be a TK70 kind of throw but it would be pretty useful for seeing far off if desired.
When I first saw the Gatlight, this idea is what I thought it was. It looked like a thrower surrounded by mule LEDs. But then I realised the surrounding LEDs couldn’t really get out the front, and it’s not that throwy. Although maybe with a TIR it could do it.
The Spy Tri-V is something like what the original poster is describing. It has multiple LEDs. One for regular use with reflector. One with no reflector for max flood, and one with an aspheric lense for max throw. The emitters are also chosen for their specific uses. The spot emitter has a small die and very high surface brightness, while the flood emitter uses a larger die to produce more lumens, though surface brightness is lower. The Spy Tri V is a ridiculously expensive custom titanium light … definitely not for budget enthusiasts (over $2000 US).
I recall a year ago reading about a budget light that had 2 emitters for flood and throw. It was a recoil thrower with 2 LEDs on the little arm projecting back into the lens. The LED facing backwards put all its output into the reflector to produce a tight spot beam. The LED facing forwards was just behind the lens and had no reflector. It produced a very even very wide short-range flood beam. The main disadvantage of this arrangement is that heatsinking is hard to do effectively since all the heat has to go down the little arm. As such, the light wasn’t driven that hard and wasn’t that bright.
FYI any optical arrangement set for maximum throw will produce an image of the reflector. This applies to aspherics, TIRs, reflector lights, and recoil reflectors. The reason why some throwy lights don’t produce an image of the die when at max throw is simply because the designers chose to leave the image slightly unfocused to produce a more pleasing beam. You can see this effect with an LED Lenser which uses a TIR. Zoom the light into spot mode and you get a nice round bright spot. Slightly unscrew the bezel to pull the TIR further out than designed and the image of the die comes into focus.
Off hand it would seem that because of the inverse square law(4x the output needed to illuminate a target 2x as far away), the perfect “tunnel of light” needs to have a beam that gets progressively brighter towards the center in a ratio of each half width beam diameter gets 4 times as bright as any given whole width beam diameter. This means it would not have a defined hotspot but progressive dimming from an intense center to a dim edge. The problem is that perfect beam would only evenly illuminate a surface if that surface were a circular tunnel with the beam pointed down the exact center. In the real world, objects don’t cooperate by placing themselves at the correct distance for even illumination and as soon the beam intersects something in the foreground, objects further away will disappear as the eye adapts to the brighter object
. I don’t think this will work but since this post was an exercise in BS on my part, I could be wrong. That was fun. Was it good for you? H)
I’m still waiting for something like this myself. With all the multi-emitter lights now it seems someone would put a xp-e or an aspheric for one of them. You could turn on either flood throw or both.
