New LEMAX LX70. Killer Polarion PH50.

[Joe_torch]

Obviously, the LX70 out throw the PH50 even at 50W.
But the bright & wide corona of the PH50 is still very impressive.
Paul, thanks for the great beam shots!:thumbsup:

 

[Dmitriyrus]

It's very disappointing to see this. No good deed goes unpunished to quote a cliche. A lot of work went into this. Thank You, Paul.

You see the smile? It was a joke
In fact, I understand that the problem is that the PH50 has no tripod screw
This light is difficult to fixation
I'm sorry if I offended someone

 

[BVH]

I thought the double parentheses were just that, a grammatical error. I didn't see it as a smiley. Sorry for my mis-interpretation. I edited my post.

 

[Patriot]

re-typing

 

[Patriot]

Polarion PH50 should be directed above.
Hotspot PH50 does not fall on concrete drainage.
This is clearly evident while browsing the a single window
I hope that you did it by accident. And not for the deliberate forgery comparison ))
For a correct comparison of PH50 and LX70, necessary re-shoot photos

I thought the double parentheses were just that, a grammatical error. I didn't see it as a smiley. Sorry for my mus-interpretation. I edited my post.

Honestly, I didn't catch this as a joke either, especially considering the wording proceeding what you called, smiley faces. It kinda looks like everyone missed it as a joke but since it is, enough said.



With regards to the pictures, I actually took two sets at two different locations last night. I was up late just getting the first set posted for you guys so I'll get the second set up tonight.

To address the PH50 photo, I agree it's low but only very slightly. It's interesting because the PH50 is actually one of the easiest lights to aim because of it's distinct hot spot. The Abyss with it's OP reflector is slightly more difficult and the LED lights are terrible because the hotspot is so poorly defined. In any case, I do everything for a reason and I'd rather have the beam slightly low vs. slightly high. The reason is because aiming slightly high would effectively increase the range of the illuminated background and lower the light value of the overall picture image...making it look less impressive. Honestly, the PH50 is so easy to aim that perhaps it slipped in my binocular stirrup when I stepped away to snap the shutter on the other tripod. I space the light and camera about 6-8 feet apart in order to avoid some of the light saber effect through the atmosphere. I do this because the lights with tighter beams will always look exponentially dramatic as compared to the light that's actually hitting the target. Spacing the light and camera helps to insure that the light reflecting off the target is the focal point and not the light bouncing off of floating particulates.

Having photographed a lot of Polarion beams over the years, especially the P Series, the beam frequently looks lower than it is due to it's large, smooth corona. It has always stood out in the HID shoot-offs because of that characteristic. I would estimate that it's only about 1.5° low or about half the width of the hot spot. I've also posted pictures of the PH50 over in the RC40 thread at a slightly higher zoom but if anyone is interested, they can see how it looks in that series as well. Actually, I can post it here but I doubt the camera settings were the same. You'll have to check the exif data....



So, that's a little bit of the "behind the scenes" story about the beamshot stuff.

 

[TEEJ]

Paul, excellent job. The LEMAX is a helluva light. Looking forward to the rest of the review when you get through the holidays.




And the joke up above there was Greek To ME.

 

[Patriot]

Same camera settings. The tower is 400 yards away. All the distances are measured with a Leica rangefinder.


Control (with a bonus aircraft!)


TM26


RC40


Abyss @45W


PH50


LX70 @ 50W


LX70 @ 70W

 

[karlthev]

Whew!! Thanks always Paul for the best in comments and reviews! I too was taken aback but all's well that ends well....

I am dying to get one of these but, may need to give up my regular bread and water ration to do so....----JOKE!!


Karl

 

[Patriot]

Some other notes about the above beamshots. The camera always rendered the LX70 cooler in color temperature than the Polarions. This isn't the case in real life. The LX70 actually has a warmer beam, about 4000K @ 70W and I'm going to guess about 4200K at 50W. The camera was set to AWB, which normally works well, and I suspect the camera was trying to overcompensate for the warmer beam.

Both sets of pictures are slightly under exposed. I usually try to over expose them slightly in order to offset some of the light loss that happens during resizing, to comply with CPF rules. This time I just didn't over compensate in the original picture enough.

In the first set of pictures, the ones from the park, there's a single power pole off in the distance that's above and to the right of the target. IIRC, this pole is at least 600 yards away (Correction it's 507 yards. I think I was thinking of the next pole down before the tree grew taller and blocked my view to it) You'll notice that some of the lights actually reach that pole but what's really amazing is that the pole isn't in the hotspot of the beam. I'm going back there tonight so I'll measure the pole with the rangefinder.

Thanks everyone! :thumbsup:

 

[karlthev]

Great second series of shots!


Karl

 

[Patriot]

....----JOKE!!

Haha!! That's how it's done man! :thumbsup:

...and thanks, Karl. You're very welcome

 

[TEEJ]

Some other notes about the above beamshots. The camera always rendered the LX70 cooler in color temperature than the Polarions. This isn't the case in real life. The LX70 actually has a warmer beam, about 4000K @ 70W and I'm going to guess about 4200K at 50W. The camera was set to AWB, which normally works well, and I suspect the camera was trying to overcompensate for the warmer beam.

Both sets of pictures are slightly under exposed. I usually try to over expose them slightly in order to offset some of the light loss that happens during resizing, to comply with CPF rules. This time I just didn't over compensate in the original picture enough.

In the first set of pictures, the ones from the park, there's a single power pole off in the distance that's above and to the right of the target. IIRC, this pole is at least 600 yards away but I'm intentionally being conservative. It might be closer to 700 yards. You'll notice that some of the lights actually reach that pole but what's really amazing is that the pole isn't in the hotspot of the beam. I'm going back there tonight so I'll measure the pole with the rangefinder.

Thanks everyone! :thumbsup:

Again Sir, Excellent Job!



If you set it to daylight balance instead of auto white, it might show the colors more representatively. It also eliminates the variables that the balancing introduces between light levels, etc.

 

[Patriot]

Again Sir, Excellent Job!



If you set it to daylight balance instead of auto white, it might show the colors more representatively. It also eliminates the variables that the balancing introduces between light levels, etc.

Thanks buddy!

Excellent suggestion. I was just about to head out and was sitting here trying to pick the best fixed WB setting. Daylight is going to look weird but at least we'll be able to see RELATIVE color differences. It's true that "whiter" pixels on the LCD screen do serve to make the average value of the picture frame look brighter.

 

[TEEJ]

Thanks buddy!

Excellent suggestion. I was just about to head out and was sitting here trying to pick the best fixed WB setting. Daylight is going to look weird but at least we'll be able to see RELATIVE color differences. It's true that "whiter" pixels on the LCD screen do serve to make the average value of the picture frame look brighter.

If you had a good way to mark which shots were what, you could do a few "bracket shots" where you use say three fixed balance settings per "shot", on a few experimental shots, to see for yourself what each looked like.

When I can, I like to go to my control location before it gets dark, and shoot some actual shots with natural light too. That shows me details I can reference at night, plus what the actual colors were, etc. Its also easier to get range finder readings, and you can use a rifle scope's range finder too, etc.

 

[Patriot]

If you had a good way to mark which shots were what, you could do a few "bracket shots" where you use say three fixed balance settings per "shot", on a few experimental shots, to see for yourself what each looked like.

When I can, I like to go to my control location before it gets dark, and shoot some actual shots with natural light too. That shows me details I can reference at night, plus what the actual colors were, etc. Its also easier to get range finder readings, and you can use a rifle scope's range finder too, etc.

All good ideas but I made it out and back already. The daylight setting made the LX70 look really warm but at least it's all relative now. Should have tonight's pic up in 30 min or so.

oh yeah...haha, it's at a park so the rifle scope might be a little scary to the wrong person. I'm getting accurate measurements using a laser ranger which is +/- 1%

 

[Patriot]

Ok guys, here's round 3!

I increased the shutter time by 1sec. I set the WB to daylight. I was using manual focus, set to ∞ but a couple of times I looked at it and it had changed (perhaps by me while setting something else). It happened a couple of times and since I didn't know how long it had been like that I re-shot entire sets. I was disappointed to find out that I still managed to get one shot slightly out of focus. It was the XeRay LX70 @ 70W in the wide angle set of pictures and it's not hard to see.

Range is 234 yards as I shot from a slightly different spot, with the park light on the left this time.


(Wide Angle)

Polarion PH50


XeVision LX70 @ 50W


XeVision LX70 @ 70W (sorry about the focus)




(Zoomed)

PH50


LX70 @ 50W


LX70 @ 70W




Zoomed 507 yards to pole above and beyond the trees.... P.S. it's not over 600 like I had thought. Bad memory

Through the rangefinder. It's grainy because I amplified the image so that the street light and treeline were visible.


PH50


LX70 @ 50W


LX70 @ 70W


PH50 and LX70 @ 70W

 

[Patriot]

Observations and thoughts about tonight's testing and the light so far;

I really took my time to center all the beams/hotspots on the concrete drainage and later the telephone pole at 507 yards. The PH50 will never look like it's centered but it is (for any newer members that might be looking at this). It's an optical illusion that's caused by the size of the hotspot, the characteristics of the corona, the size of the target, and the angle over the ground.

In some of these shots it may look like the PH50 is brighter than the LX70. Again it's an optical illusion caused by the shape of the hotshot and corona. The LX70 is substantially brighter in the hotspot even at 50W. The Polarion distributes more light around a wider corona and fills more pixels on the screen making it look brighter at 50W. The actual lux readings are very close with the LX70 measuring 893lux @50W and the PH50 measuring 865lux. Slight advantage to the LX70 even though it's hard to tell in the pictures. You really have to focus on the hot spot of each beam to see where the lumens are concentrated.

PH50 stabilized


LX70 @ 50W stabilized


LX70 @ 70W stabilized (the stabilized reading is about the same as the peak reading) Seems that the LX70's boost phase steadily throttles back as the lamp warms up over a period of approximately 15sec. refer back to my warm up video.


PH50 during boost phase. Shot was taken right under the peak lux of 1145. I've still never seen a faster warm up time from a handheld HID, except for perhaps the Night Reaper. Harder on the lamp of course but might be an acceptable trade-off


The Polarion is stated to have a 3° hot spot. I'd say it's probably 4°. If this is accurate and I suspect that's pretty close, the XeVision probably has a 2.0° degree beam spot. I measured the differences on a white wall with double sunglasses on and then applied a percentage to the measurement. The LX70 has a hot spot about 48% the size of the PH50. This provides an incredibly intense hot spot. This is a result of the 100mm reflector as opposed to the 72mm in the Polarion. It's about 50% more reflector surface area and it's quite noticeable when using the light. Keep in mind that I'm not referring to usability here as I think the PH50 probably has the advantage under 250yards because of the corona. Beyond that however, the LX70 is untouchable. I still have too measure throw lux but it might be double that of the PH50. I'm just estimating it at 850,000+ throw lux at this point. Again, don't hold me to that, afterall, I was wrong about the range of that telephone pole by 100 yards...haha.




(Some long winded thoughts about the color temperature)

When the LX70 is @ 50W, the color temperature is decent. When I bump it up the 70W I'd say there's a 200K swing to the warm that takes a little getting used to. XeVision states that it's about 4000K and iirc, should get just a smidgen warmer during the first 10 hours of bulb life and I'm probably at close 5 hours now. I've never owned a HID light that's warmer than 4300K and my dream temperature for HID is probably just slightly warmer than BVH's at about 4600K. What's interesting about color temperature is that the brain sort of auto white balances itself after a while and doesn't realize that it's being tricked UNLESS it has something memorably color relative or actually color relative to look at. For example, you could walk around the park and think, "wow, this is the perfect color" until you get back to your car and see that it's way different than it looks in the sun. When I'm walking around the desert with the LX70, I'm amazed at how the greens and browns pop out of the background. It's a very soothing, cozy feel and (this is going to sound stupid) makes me feel warmer. :huh: I know, it just does. As much time as I spent in the outdoors alone, sooner or later I'm bound to experience that uneasy feeling. It might be because the imagination is at work or because I'm wet and or tired, or because I hear a big cat and think I'm being watched or stalked for the next 15 minutes. Just being honest, it happens. The 4000K is good for easing those feelings away and I experienced this with the LX70 my 2nd time out with it. I was way out away from civilization on a week night and my hearing was deadened by a river that was running nearby. Since I'm used to silence when I hike, the inability to hear things was really working on me. After a while I was able to "settle down" with the LX70. Granted, this isn't a hiking light but I'm just sharing what I experienced.

Now for the "actually" relative part... when I turn on the PH50 or Abyss, all of a sudden everything looks over saturated with the LX70. The Polarion makes it look like the sun is out because the color is closer to high noon. The LX70 has a color that's more like the Arizona sunsets during that shallow angle of light. If I was lost in the woods I'm not sure what I'd take, maybe the LX70 because it seems to amplify greens and makes me cozy? If I was an artist however, I'd illuminate my artwork with the Polarion. Obviously we're in some really subjective territory and opinions will vary greatly.

I guess that's about it for now.

 

[Dmitriyrus]

Honestly, I didn't catch this as a joke either, especially considering the wording proceeding what you called, smiley faces. It kinda looks like everyone missed it as a joke but since it is, enough said.

I admit - - it looks a bad joke.
Perhaps it looks like this because I do not know English. I only know a few words.
I communicate using "google translate".
In any case - this is my problem and it's my fault.
I bring to you personal apology.

 

[The_Driver]

@Patriot: thanks for doing all this work for the community! :thumbsup:

So far the light seems to have no donwsides for what it is! That's quite rare.

How is the wheight subjectively?

 

[XeRay]

There is no comparison between the old Barnburner XeRay 75 watt, and the new XV-LX70.
The new light output simply blows it away, the beam (reflector quality) of the Barn Burner was sub par at best.

It made up for poor reflector quality, somewhat with brute force power, still not enough to keep up with the XV-LX70.