Personally, if you ask me, it is impossible to focus a T6’s 120 deg beam with that kind of parabola (big and not deep) properly. All the flashaholic flashlight reflectors are much deeper. I know that a reflector’s depthj is not a factor in getting higher lux (diameter is), but just that…it’s probably not even nicely focussed with LEDs, if it’s even possible at all with that shallow a reflector with a XM-L’s 120 deg beam characteristic (non-optimised).
How about HIDs then? Dunno…but i do know that they are nicely focussed with the focal length about 1 inch into the reflector.
Too floody, i guess. But not too bad. It’s not a real wide angle shot, nor is it a telephoto shot. No EXIF unfortunately. Compare target distance/size of the guy vs the searchlight head size (8”). MAybe focal length = 50mm shot.
ZK2146. It says it’s shooting at a ~ 200m building. Well it’s definitely PSed, can’t be focussed on the light (in focus) and the target is still so clear.
xml output is still more or less sinusoid (as if lens isn’t there). Not as great for flat-ish reflector for putting light into the spot vs the flood as a filament point but that only makes the spot smaller, not dimmer (since if you look at a square from an angle, it becomes smaller, not dimmer).
xml output is still more or less sinusoid (as if lens isn’t there). Not as great for flat-ish reflector for putting light into the spot vs the flood as a filament point but that only makes the spot smaller, not dimmer (since if you look at a square from an angle, it becomes smaller, not dimmer).
[/quote]
So you are saying what I was also saying? Maybe you could rephrase that into layman terms.
What I mean is that even with a shallow reflector, the light around the ends of the emitter will still be projected into the spot. If you plot a Cos curve, you can figure approx what percent of light can be focused into the spot by integrating to the angle created by the reflector (xml output is similar to this, just check cree doc on it). A shallower reflector will still be just as bright in the spot, just less % of the total output in and around that central area.
Late on this thread but here are pics of my 225MM XM-L. I dusted it off because I never use it. It throws like crazy but what would you expect with a head so large. Actually for the size of it, it doesn’t throw much better than my HD2010. Tonight I will do a beam test comparison and upload the pics.
The focusing on this reflector was engineered for the light source to be about 1 inch from the back.
That’s why the LED is so high into the reflector.
I am pretty familiar with the HIDs and the focus with such a large reflector and small “light source” is very sensitive. ie The large the reflector and smaller the emitting light source, the more sensitive things are. Ratio of emitting surface to reflector size.
A few folks bought the 5W XP-G version of the Zuke but no reports. Or maybe there were, i’ll do a search.
Thanks for the beamshots, i’ll try to analyze for you.
Problem with leds an this type of large incan bulb reflectors is the emission angle of the led (one sided and 120° ish) is such that most of the light probably isn’t even focus at all (easy enough to calculate with reflector dimensions and led position).
JamesB and 2100, you are both right. This light has a very small, tight focused beam that really throws far and has tons of spill. The spill comes from light that never touches the reflector and the focused beam comes from that which does. I positioned the dome to produce the tightest hot spot. Moving it back of forward produces a VERY ugly hot spot. The point made by JamesB is that the reflector has to be designed for the type and size of the light source.
To me the light coming out of this light looks like the spill of sipik68 in flood mode with a strong center hot spot superimposed on top of it.
There are a lot of lumens not hitting the reflector.
I think this is the easiest to understand in terms of layman’s understanding.
You could take a look above, for the biggest ZK-2993 w XM-L T6. The spill is really a lot, as in it hits the ground quite close to the user. Let me try to visualise how big an angle (depth of reflector) that is.
ie very small hotspot, eg 1/4 size of say a STL-V2……but it could be just a wee bit brighter (lux) only.
But for your 9” host, the reflector is really extremely shallow. I have listed on example above, the small one with aluminum body, the reflector is quite a bit deeper….as in the cone / angle is “steeper”. Can take out any of your regular flashlights to compare.