Some high-DR, high-resolution emitter photos...

I decided to pull out my Nikon D800 and AF-S 60mm f/2.8G Macro to take some high resolution close-up shots of the LEDs in some of my lights. Thought I'd share these since I think they turned out pretty cool!

I am posting small, 640 pixel wide images, but each one has a link below to open a large 4000 pixel wide version for closer scrutiny. The filenames reflect which flashlight was photographed. All were synchronized with the same white balance but they are not to scale with each other. I made no effort to ensure that the emitter itself was the same distance from the camera, since that would have been pretty much impossible to do with any sort of real accuracy anyway.

Similar to my ceiling beam-shot photos, the dynamic range has been enhanced dramatically to not only show detail in the lit part of the LED but all the surrounding area too. All lights had their output set to minimum, except the Predator Pro, which was up one notch. I augmented some of the shots by shining my SRT7 in to light up the area behind the emitters a tiny bit. This was most effective on the Thrunite TN32 since it has such a wide reflector and it was easy to get the light past the barrel of the macro lens and down into the bottom of the reflector. Some additional observations follow...

To the naked eye, the MT-G2 LED is pretty darn cool looking, but up close it is quite rough, easily the "ugliest" of the bunch! You can see slight centering issues on many of the LEDs. The TN32 has a slight grey spot on the emitter, a defect in the phosphor coating maybe? There are also many out-of-focus blobs visible in the shot of the TN32, and those are slight bubbles or defects in the reflector that are in front of the very narrow plane of focus.

I have to give SupBeam, NiteCore and ArmyTek kudos for having the cleanest overall LED assemblies and reflectors when compared to most of my other lights! :thumbsup: There is virtually no dust internally, the LEDs themselves are reasonably dust free and the surrounding areas are nearly spotless. The other lights look surprisingly dusty in comparison as you'll clearly see when examining the high-res shots!

Of course the dust or slight marks on the reflectors will not affect the light in any significant way whatsoever, but it is just surprising to me to see some of them look so darn filthy up close! Now onto the photos...




MX25L3 high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/EagleTac_MX25L3_MT-G2.jpg




TN32 high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/Thrunite_TN32_XM-L2.jpg




X40 high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/SupBeam_X40_XM-L2.jpg




SRT7 high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/NiteCore_SRT7_XM-L2.jpg




Predator Pro high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/ArmyTek_PredatorPro_XP-G2_Cool.jpg




Predator (warm) high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/ArmyTek_Predator_XP-G2_Warm.jpg




Wizard Pro Wide high-res: http://www.sublimephoto.com/blogimages/2014-01/emitters/ArmyTek_WizardPro_Wide.jpg

Nice!!! That MT-G2 is very interesting and cool. I wonder if that is a little piece of dust on the XM-L2 in your TN32? I had an LED in one of my lights that had that, too.

Great pics.

+1. thanks for sharing

Thanks to the mod that moved my original post. Sorry, I wasn't even aware of all the diverse forums here one level up. I had bookmarked "Forums: Flashlights" and always started there when browsing. Now I see there's a whole other world… oo:

Awesome pics. Some would make excellent desktop wallpapers...

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Have you ever heard about the trick you can do about holding the camera lens in reverse to the camera? I've done this with a 50mm 1.8 lens and it gives you a Ultra macro lens. You can focus about 3-4 inches from the lens and get amazing closeup pics. Here is an example: http://digital-photography-school.c...prime-lenses-for-affordable-macro-photography

mds82 said:

Have you ever heard about the trick you can do about holding the camera lens in reverse to the camera?

Click to expand...

Yes, lens reversing rings were popular back in the day of film cameras. However nowadays, most modern lenses no longer have aperture rings, such as Canon EF or Nikon AF-S 'G' series lenses. Even the Fujifilm X-series lenses that do have aperture rings wouldn't work since the rings are electronic affairs, not mechanical. That means that when reversed, most modern lenses will either be wide open or fully stopped down with no control over the working f-stop, neither a good option. Of course then there is the loss of any autofocus capability, but for macro work that is not as important.

I did experiment with reversed lenses in the past and generally found the image quality acceptable in the centre of the frame (sometimes very good actually) but it usually got progressively poorer as you moved away from the centre. A proper macro lens is definitely the way to go if you want edge to edge image quality and if you need higher magnifications, simply use extension tubes. Those allow you to focus closer than the lens' minimum focus distance and when coupled with a macro lens, generally perform very well with very minimal degradation in image quality.

You can also use extension tubes with non-macro lenses and many such combinations perform quite well, although some won't. Again, with modern cameras, you would need to get extension tubes with electronic couplings to ensure that aperture control and AF work as they normally do. Kenko has good quality extension tubes with full electronic coupling capability. Note that many inexpensive extension tubes you can get on Amazon or eBay are simply tubes having the appropriate male and female bayonet mounts, but with no electronic contacts, so you would again lose aperture control and AF on modern lenses.

If you do have lenses with true mechanical aperture rings (older Nikkor lenses or example), then buying a reversing ring (or cheap extension tube) is an extremely affordable way of getting a macro capable lens though and it may suffice for your needs, so I don't want to talk anyone out of experimenting either...