V3 Comparative Lumen OTF Table

So, since my last two OTF lumen tables: (1 – here and here and 2 – here) I not only have more lights to test, but have also changed my testing set-up. It seems that the placement of the lights and lux meter, which was an acknowledged issue for V1, was still causing an unecessarily significant bias in V2, dependent upon beam profile.


I have tried a few different positions and now feel that I have 'fixed' this bias for a more reliable set of readings. Having done that, I spent a good deal of yesterday testing almost all of the lights that I had to hand. The following table shows my results.


One thing to note is that, due to the repositioning of the lights relative to the lux meter, my lux readings and conversion factor (32) were much lower and higher respectively. This means less accuracy at lower readings, as the lowest possible increment was 3.2 lumens. In light of this I have had to omit a few lights lowest modes, and I would also advise caution in accepting any sub 10 lumen readings as particularly accurate (although they should still be accurate to within 1.5 either side).

Also, here is the link to the table on imgur: http://imgur.com/17zvmUL just in case the image posted here is too large for the CPF rules.

Anyway, I hope you find them useful and/or interesting

The LED Lenser H7 (Ni-mh) shows that ceiling bounce measurements depend on the beam pattern.

I don't think so; the focusing of the light to throw is much more efficient with LED Lenser's TIR system than a conventional aspheric, however it still involves raising the TIR so that the cone surrounding the LED is slightly higher than optimal. Therefore in max throw mode the optics are still a bit less efficient than in full flood. I think that that explains the small difference in outputs OTF between those settings.

RedForest UK said:

still a bit less efficient than in full flood.

Click to expand...

ah okay i am getting it now.
you may be right!

:wave:

Thanks for the extensive table. Quite helpful. The Armytek numbers are impressive.

No worries, I see exactly why you pulled it up.

I've actually just done some further quick testing to confirm. I used a thin tissue paper over the lens of the H7 to keep the beam diffused in both spot and flood settings, I found a similar 5-10% output difference with both beams diffused as before. I couldn't be too accurate as it's still light so there are slightly fluctuating ambient light levels to subtract from whatever number I get. However, the results do seem to support a slight drop in efficiency on max throw setting. Also, any bias in previous tests was in favour of throw over flood rather than vice versa.

So I think the results are still good


The Armytek is very impressive, I don't think listing OTF over emitter lumens would've done their sales any harm; most people around here are skeptical of any light listing emitter lumens only.

It's the overall build quality/UI/tint/beam profile of the Armytek that I find so good, rather than just sheer output and efficiency. There are a few niggly issues with the temperature protection settings on this first production run, but overall it's still a very very good light, which is a few steps ahead of any of its competition imo. When they've got the thermal protection settings sorted I think it will be fantastic.