What's With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

I don't know about you guys but these new SF "oval" beamed LA's are HORRIBLE! I used to have a MN61 LA in a 12V UBH and also a newer SF M6 Millenium light with the MN20 and MN21 LA's and I couldn't stand that silly squashed beam. I see where Surefire is touting them as the latest and greatest but to me, they are irritating at best. I have an old KT1 turbo head with a N1 LA and the difference is like night and day. I'll take a nice round beam over these new oval beams any day!

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

what's wrong with an oval beam? my PT40's got a oval beam and it doesn't bother me any.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

I don't care for the SF line with the L4 and E2e being the exceptions. Those exceptions have a nice round beam.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

The beam is the shape it is because of the shape of the filament and the reflector gathering as much light as possible from it.

I personally don't care for the MN10 (M3) or MN15 (M3T) compared to the less squashed MN11 & MN16 beams.

I'm not a huge fan of the MN60 but the MN61's I've got are okay

Is the MN21 beam really that oval? I find that surprising. Can you take a photo of the filament please?

The smaller thinner filaments of the N lamps produce the most round beams. The MN01 and MN03 are also know for their roundness.

Do your lamps and beams look significantly different from these?
[Shelby Chan Photo]

Thanks

Al

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

Are they supposed to be oval, or is the bulb just off-center in the reflector? The reflector is round, right? Seems like the beam should be round, as well.
I have 3 P90s. 2 spares still in the package, and one in the light. It has an oval hotspot. The bulb is visibly off-center. The base of the bulb appears centered, but it "leans" to one side (the tip of the bulb is decidedly off). Looking through the packaging, both of my spares are off-center. I have no doubt they will have oval hotspots, as well.
I like my light, but have paid less for complete flashlights that had stippled reflectors and centered bulbs with perfectly round beams, than one these LAs goes for.
I find that more than a little disappointing.

btw, I agree with Al that the MN03, etc, and N2 give perfectly round beams. Interesting that my lights with fixed reflectors seem to have round beams, while the "lamp assemblies" I have owned like the P60 and P90 do not...

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

They supposed to be oval. The reflector is gathering light from a "bar or arch" rather than a "dot or point".
The bulb may be off centre (tilted or whatever), but the filament inside the bulb is what is focused and fixed.

If you look at the N2 compared to the MN15 you will see that the filaments are very different.
The P90/N2 vs MN10/MN15 shows us that with a different filament and reflector combinations 20 Lumens extra can be gained in the beam. The downside for those who want round beams is that the 20 extra Lumens is added to the sides of the beam making it appear squashed.

Of course SureFire could change the reflector and/or filament to only create a more point-source beam but that would be less efficient with light being wasted.

I think that most SureFire users use SureFire beams to look at things rather than use things to look at SureFire beams.

Al /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

Sorry, I don't have any pictures and I can't post them because I don't have a picture hosting site and anyway, I got rid of all of them!

I realize that a lot of folks will disagree with me on this but I just do not want a squashed beam on any of my lights. I also realize that some will not even notice this or might even prefer the oval beam but I do not!

If you check the Surefire site, they will tell you that these squashed beams are "tactical". These "tactical" beams may be great for firearm use but in real everyday use, as Blinded alluded to, I'd much rather have the nice round beams of the N1, N2 or L4.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

One of my friends came round in November with a bag of all his SureFire lamps. We spent a couple hours comparing his lamps to mine and he rated how he liked each of his beams. He loves the purest roundest beams and "discarded" many SureFire lamps that didn't meet his demanding requirements. Most of those discards I would have used without issue. In fact I'm using one of the X80's because we swapped as he preferred the one I had. However, there were a few that he is going to send back to SureFire because he doesn't think they are good enough to be SureFire. He has a point. Some of the beams were quite poor compared to others.

He is Jahn Projects - the Round Pure Beam Freak.

I spoke to the man who designed the the lamps for the M3. I wanted to know why they had to have "squashed" beams. In the end PK came along and said we should stop talking about bulbs and get some drinks (which was a very good idea I must admit) What came from the conversation is that SureFire designs it's products carefully to requirements that are usually different from the flashaholic and the Round-Pure-Beam-Freak who is Jahn (and I guess we all have a bit of RPBF in us - I certainly have)

Isn't is great that SureFire offer a range of flashlights?
So that we can be happy with one model and unhappy with others.

Al

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams?

Al,
Thanks as always for a lively discussion! I think I must be "Jahn Projects" reincarnate because I love round, bright beams! Squashed beams, (to me), leave out about 20% of available projections of light as compared to round beams. I agree that we "flashaholics" have different requirements than what Surefire designs for their "regular" customers.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

And while we are at it, can we do something about that elliptical orbit the earth takes around the sun? I would prefer a circular path.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

i have two LA's for my tactical torch, the first one had the oval beam, and i noticed the bulb was off centre in the reflector. the second LA has the bulb aligned in the centre, and has a round beam.

what's the story about the bulbs being off centre?
I thought all SF LA's were all focused by hand?

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

The bulb may be off centre (tilted or whatever), but the filament inside the bulb is what is focused and fixed.
The position of the filament [within the bulb] in the reflector is much more important than the orientation of the bulb itself.

I don't think the bulb being off centre causes the difference between the beams of your two lamps. More likely slight differences in the filament and reflector.

Al

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

Yep Gene, the ovalness sucks. I don't care for it at all. It found in many of the SureFire lamps. The roundest ones are found in the N1 and N2 turbo lamps.

BTW, you guys would believe how off-centered the bulb sits in the base assembly of the P61. Off-centered my be a wrong term. Maybe I should say "slanted" instead. I'm surprised with each one I take the reflector off of.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

What kind of scenes are you guys looking at with your flashlights? If you wanted to take a picture of the scene you're illuminating would you want it to be a round (or square) picture? Or would you want it to be oval (or rectangular)?

I find the field of view that I want to illuminate is nearly always wider than it is tall, so an oval beam lights up more useful field. Occasionally I want to light up something that's taller than it is wide, like a tree, and then I rotate the flashlight 90 degrees. I never seem to want to light up a round field....

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

That's very true, and I actually like the P90 lighting up a wider area outdoors in comparison to other lights of similar output (like my Stinger). I don't really have a big problem with it, but couldn't help but wonder if the "misshapen" beam was intentional, or due to a lack of time or effort in production.
These are supposed to be tactical lights. I don't know that I'd want to be concentrating on rotating my flashlight 90 degrees-all the better to see you with-if using it with a firearm. I think I'd want consistency, regardless of how I grabbed my light.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

I dont see what the big deal is. If you only use your Surefires to shine them at the wall and seeing how perfect and round the beam is, fine. But I spend money on flashlights to use them, and in the field a bright white circle is undistinguishable for a bright white oval. Just my $.02.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

This subject keeps coming up. For the round-beam folks, just try to *get* an N2! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif

It is only MHO-I am not qualified to say for sure-but I should think the oval beam is good for lighting up a subject head-to-foot. Al, am I right?

BTW, cool photo of the LA comparisons!

Rich

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

Has anybody noticed that the P61 and P91 generally seem to produce rounder beams than their P60 and P90 counterparts? I've found this to be true and wonder if others have noticed this too? Maybe my sampling is too small to be significant.

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

[ QUOTE ]
Size15s said:
He is Jahn Projects - the Round Pure Beam Freak.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would that be Jahn, as in the seemingly mysteriously disappeared Lightlover? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: What\'s With These HORRIBLE Surefire Oval Beams

Indeed. He'll be back. "Soon". I believe there's still an issue he needs to resolve concerning a missing two inches...

Al