I'll take the challenge of defending that or in this case at least pointing out that that was not a useful or usual beam shot that most people have used in the past. That beam shot is ONE FOOT from the wall. Most lights are not going to look good that close to a wall and that is not the usual way people do beam shots in the past. I'll bet someone went through a lot of lights to find any other lights that looked good at 1 foot from the wall. I've got over 80 lights and very few look good that close to a wall. Not a good test and with most lights on high or near high you will see a lot of garbage. However if you turn the brightness down on the HDS Rotary when it is one foot from the wall as one would expect you don't need much brightness that close to anything then the beam does not look bad at all.
That particular beamshot, being only a foot from the wall, may not be a valid example of the ringiness in the beam, but look at the three outdoor beamshots in the same post. They're all (as far as I can tell) taken at a greater distance, yet the rings are still there and are still obvious. My Rotary has a beam pattern similar to that light both at 1 foot and at the ranges shown in the outdoor shots. I posted a beamshot a few pages back (I think in #14) that was taken at 5 feet and displays distinct rings and tint variation. I'd be willing to bet there's variation in how obvious the rings are from one Rotary to another, which may (partially) account for the varying degrees of satisfaction with the beam pattern. There may be a "Rotary ring lottery," so to speak. What I can tell you is my particular Rotary, and from what I can tell the Rotary balloonshark was referencing, have distinctly ringy beams at all practical distances, not just close to a white wall. From what I've gathered, Rotaries have this issue, despite a lucky few who may have beams with negligible rings. Whether the rings actually
matter to a particular individual is up to that individual to decide. There's no point in trying to convince each other that we should or shouldn't care about the rings. And there's especially no point in debating whether or not Rotaries actually
have ringy beams at real world distances, when it's been documented quite thoroughly here.
Also, I tend not to doubt balloonshark when he says his emitter is off-center. He's the one holding the light, looking at it from all angles, making a real meaningful judgement. I don't think the possibility of his picture being poorly aligned is enough of a reason to doubt him. I bet the shadow at the 7 o'clock position on the PCB is a result of the offset between the flash and the lens on his camera. Besides, with the bottom of the reflector and the emitter being so close to each other relative to their distance from the camera, the parallax shift from a slightly misaligned camera probably would not be enough to create the impression that the emitter is that off-center.
EDIT: bondr006, I have to say, the difference between those two beams isn't nearly as obvious in the outdoor shots as in the white wall shots. From my experience, I'd guess it's more obvious in person. As far was the
cause of those differences, it could be different reflectors. Assuming the lights are using the same reflector, though, it may just be production variation. The emitter isn't going to be focused exactly the same on every light, and a very minor difference could mean the difference between minimal or no rings and quite obvious rings. Additionally, tint variation is a well-known phenomenon with LEDs.
