Aspherical Lens for small flashlight

[taschenlampe]

I am sure some guys will try it soon, let's wait for their results …

tl

 

[Ilikeshinythings]

How did you guys all become so smart? I can't understand any of it but I have to say that I am impressed. And I can't agree more with taschen's last statement: let's wait to see what happens. Regardless, this little R1 light from ultrafire is a true thing of beauty!

 

[Luminescent]

From my experence, even with this limitation the Aspheric would still outperform a reflector based light by 2 to 1 or more on throw.

Let me eat some of my own words here, and agree with taschenlampe for a moment, and amend my earlier comments to say that a very well engineered reflector WILL beat an Aspheric if it's very precisely made and deep enough.

I have this 3 D-Cell Dorcy Light:

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/113883


When I was playing around with the 50mm Aspheric lenses, I would use this light as a reference, because it has an insainly good reflector that will throw a 1 foot spot at almost 50 feet.

If you ever see one of these things hanging on a peg at a local Target SNAP IT UP (unlikely though as most of them disappeared overnight about a year ago when they were put on clearance for 5 to 10 dollars).

This light only uses a 1 watt Luxeon [heavily overdriven] but it's reflector works SOOOO well that I had a hard time beating it even with a fully driven 80 lumen CREE and Aspheric lens.

On the other hand, the Aspheric will beat just about every other light I own, hands down, and just by luck, the Aspheric add-on for a maglight host is cheaply available and fairly easy to do, where custom reflectors are quite expensive and a bit hard to come by.

Also the Dorcy light is not easily focused and though you can adjust it over a limited range, it really can't go all the way from spot to flood.

On the other hand, the Aspheric lens based modded maglights have really nice FLOOD when defocused, and this sets them apart from even a fancy 150 dollar 'custom' reflector which will really really SUCK on defocused flood. (can you say "donut holes", boys and girls?).

I think the flood issue is important, because as I said earlier, a light that is all throw and no flood, is not very usefull most of the time.