Throw vs Flood - why no in between?

Just got an Olight X7 and while I am pretty happy with it, it got me wondering. Why are lights made for just one purpose or the other, throw or flood. Why not a good combination of both? Is it the emitters themselves, reflector design, or is it just marketing? My X7 would be more useful if they took 25% of the flood and put it into the throw capability.

There are beams with some varying composite of flood and throw.
the TK75 is a good example of a nice composite longer-range beam. it is also a rather large light!
Throw comes only with a deeper reflector for each LED emitter.
for the max throw, the reflector diameter has to be increased.
eg: A good long-range beam example would be the TN40 which is relatively short overall, but the head diameter is very large, borderline pocketable in a coat pocket.
the MH20 vs MH20GT is a good example of a close tradeoff between a composite beam (MH20) vs a thrower beam (MH20GT)
The MH20GT head is a bit longer because of the deeper reflector.
the size of the LED emitter also influences the beam and reflector size.

IOW, if you want distance, then the size of the reflector and light has to increase.

Puffcat said:

Just got an Olight X7 and while I am pretty happy with it, it got me wondering. Why are lights made for just one purpose or the other, throw or flood. Why not a good combination of both? Is it the emitters themselves, reflector design, or is it just marketing? My X7 would be more useful if they took 25% of the flood and put it into the throw capability.

Click to expand...

There are many lights that offer a more traditional type beam, hot spot/spill. Many lights with high output that chuck out a wall of decent throwing light( near 400kcd and 35,000lm! if you have the budget).

What kind of throw do you have in mind? The acebeam k60 offers good throw and bright spill, little cheaper you have the convoy L6. Both lights use the xhp70, both have larger orange peel reflectors to smooth out the beam(hot spot to spill transition).

There is the Niwalker lights. The MM18ll is a thrower and flood, 8000 lumens.

Lateck,

Puffcat said:

Just got an Olight X7 and while I am pretty happy with it, it got me wondering. Why are lights made for just one purpose or the other, throw or flood. Why not a good combination of both? Is it the emitters themselves, reflector design, or is it just marketing? My X7 would be more useful if they took 25% of the flood and put it into the throw capability.

Click to expand...

The Olight X7 is about 8900lm, 36500 cd, throw ~382m
If you looking good balance between flood and throw:
BLF Q8- ~5000lm, 58kcd, throw ~480m
Acebeam X45 V2.0- ~18000lm, 75 kcd, throw ~580m

Actually, the depth of the reflector has more impact on how much throw there is. Visualize the following: The way an LED is constructed light leaves the surface in almost a complete half sphere, more some if the LED is domed. A wide reflector lets more of those rays of light proceed unreflected, resulting in a wider spill. As a reflector deepens, it intercepts more of those rays and aligns them into the main center beam. The deeper the reflector, the narrower the beam, with the corresponding spill amount decreasing both in intensity and in angle.

A good example of this is the Nitecore P30. Its max output at Turbo is only 1,000 lumens, yet it is able to put 95,500cd into the main beam, for a throw of 615m. These numbers are the stated results as per the ANSI/NEMA FL1 specification. The candela number is probably pretty accurate, but in terms of usefulness, the range is probably closer to 400m. The P30 accomplishes this by using a very deep reflector. The head is only 50mm wide, but the reflector is close to 70mm deep. At high output levels, there is a very definite bright narrow beam out the front.

To get back to the original question, some of the zoomie lights attempt to do just that, allow the user to select exactly how much spill and throw is presented. Other lights, like the TM16 attempt this by using four emitters in relatively shallow reflectors. The increased lumen output from four emitters extends the throw, while the shallow reflectors allow more spill.

I think the ratio between the size of the emitter and size of the reflector have more to do with throw than how deep the reflector is. At least, that is the consensus over at BLF, and I trust those mad scientists when it comes to flashlight physics. Depth usually goes hand-in-hand with size though. Some reflectors that are abnormally deep for their size-- take the armytek predator for example-- don't throw more than other lights with similar width reflectors, they just have narrower spill. The center beam remains unaffected.

As far as lights that are in-between flood and throw, I think most lights are actually like that. There are very few dedicated throwers and dedicated flooders compared to lights with an average beam pattern.

If you take any domed LEd and put it in a reflector of around 1" to 1.5," you'll have an all-rounder type beam with a bit of flood and throw. Likewise if you take any of the larger LEDs, like the XHP50 and XHP70 and put them in reflectors up to 2.5 to even 3 inches, you'll still get an all-around type beam.

In addition to the informative posts located above this post,

I need to remind myself that more flood means more power, due to more area that needs to be illuminated.

Throw vs Flood - why no in between?

Because it is easy to make a flood configuration that has low throw, and because it is easy to make a throw configuration that has low power.

The first is made with large-die emitters that have high power but low throw due to large die size, and the second is made with small die emitters that have high throw but less power.

It is not easy to make a flood configuration that has more throw, due to the large die size emitters.

It is not easy to make a throw configuration that has more power, due to the small die size emitter.

One way to make a flooder do some throw is to place a single power/flood emitter in a large diameter reflector, a la the K60.

One way to make throw emitters yield power/flood is to combine a few of them, a la the X65.

I like the rifle scope analogy. Field of view and magnification are opposed to each other. If you want more of both, you need a larger scope.

Also, the rifle cartridge analogy: Long range and up front shut down power are opposed to each other. If you want more of both, you need a larger cartridge.

Same with throw and flood in a flashlight. Throw and flood are opposites. If you want more of both, you will need a larger flashlight.

Small flashlights are great, if a low power flooder or a short range thrower are ok; or if only throw or only flood are needed.

Yes, nice thread worth reading.

Sure wish we could come up with a metric that can inform buyers, perhaps using an x-y axis scale, to describe where a particular flashlight is with regard to its ability to throw versus its ability to light up an area. If something could be concocted, the total number of individual flashlights sold (not kinds of models available) would probably make something of a bell curve, with general purpose (a combination of flood and throw) flashlights being in the majority, seems like.

i wonder why maukka stop post measure of the intensity vs angle in his review.:thinking:
From this graph you can easily see Olight R50 has the best balance between flood & throw.

Yes, I didn't want to get into it in my already lengthy exposition, but die size does make a difference. Remember, for a parabolic reflector to truly work well requires a single point light source. So the light coming from the center of a die, regardless of size, is going to be condensed into the center of the beam, and therefore contribute to throw. Light coming from further away from the center is more likely to be reflected off-axis and wind up as part of the spill. That is why a small die size will out throw a large die of equivalent power. The ideal would be an incredibly small die of extreme power - which is gonna happen Real Soon Now - we hope.

What is this magical small die emitter of extreme power coming out soon? You got my interest.

twistedraven said:

What is this magical small die emitter of extreme power coming out soon? You got my interest.

Click to expand...

'Real Soon Now'. That was a favorite saying of Jerry Pournelle when he was writing his computer user columns for Byte, and later for his own blog. Basically, it is a snark on all the announcements about some fantastic new product that XZY Corp has just developed, and will be available Real Soon Now, which translates into 'next week, next month, next quarter, next year, next decade, never'.

Just look for something with a CD in the 16K-19K range

Fenix LD50 for example is a good mixed purpose light. with 270 yard of throw and lots of flood.

or

Something with two different beams in the same light Fenix Tk51 with 425 meters of throw but also has a pure flood mode. So you can use the Flood beam, the Throw beam or both at the same time.

Short answer to original poster's question: The optimal layout for the head of the light differs depending on whether a light is designed for throw or flood.

Consider the following:

• Flood: A small pocket flooder like the Emisar D4: Small head with very small TIR reflectors and multiple emitters. Peak output is over 4000 lumens, but it comes out as a floody wall of light (about 20,000 lux with the XPL HI version).
• Throw: A thrower like the BLF GT: A gigantic light with an absolutely massive reflector. Enormous throw (something like 1.3 million lux). Yet, the max lumens outputted by this monster is only around 1300... far less than the tiny D4.

In general The bigger and wider the optic and reflector is the more throw you get. In the same light, going from a single emitter with a large reflector to 3 emitters with smaller reflectors increases flood, but doesn't increase throw. It may actually decrease throw as the smaller reflectors may have gaps between them.

On the other hand if all you want is a ton of flood, then adding extra emitters helps a lot. This is why lights like the Emisar D4 have more than 1 emitter.

Based on my 50+ flashlights, the perfect mix of flood & throw, to my eye, is when lux is 40 times the lumen.

My Eagletac MX25L4Cvn matches this formula. It is modded by @vinhnguyen54 and runs about 4,000 lumen & 160,000 lux. And it will run long before getting hot.

MAD777 said:

Based on my 50+ flashlights, the perfect mix of flood & throw, to my eye, is when lux is 40 times the lumen.

My Eagletac MX25L4Cvn matches this formula. It is modded by @vinhnguyen54 and runs about 4,000 lumen & 160,000 lux. And it will run long before getting hot.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I have never thought in this specific way, but when I think about it and calculate on several of my flashlights I think I very much agree with your point of view when it comes to a good compromise between brightness and throw.
Also: if this ratio includes a smooth transition between the spill and the hotspot such a light will provide a decent throw but still without the hotspot being very dominating and strenuous for the eyes at short distance.

I actually like the Acebeam L30 for a good throw/flood light.

I second the praise of the Acebeam L30 awesome flood/throw.
Any reviews on here yet on it?

As stated by many there are plenty of in between true throwers and flood lights, I like the comments of 40k lux and a 1000 lumens or so being the middle ground.

a true thrower with no flood would have one or more aspheric lenses. A total flood light would have no reflector