LS Has New Lens Design

Just received two LS's from ARC, and I noticed the lens is now flat across the top, instead of the former concave shape with center dimple. I swapped out the lens in my headlamp mod with the new design lens, and the beam is considerably more focused, almost like a MAG beam on tight focus. Not sure I like it better than the old style, it definately throws a further beam.

How is the beam quality? Is the yellow/brown corona less visible in the new design? It would be interesting to see pictures of the two different designs. I thought the old design was much more focused then what you see from typical Nichia led lights.

Here is a shot (at 6') of my Luxeon minimag mod using the boost circuit & the old optic. It's wider but not as "pretty". You can also see the leads.




Here is the same Luxeon with the newer optic. Its tighter focus has more throw, works much better outside and for long distances. It also shows fewer of the Luxeons' defects.

Personally, I think the old optic looks like crap! Using the new one makes the beam look more uniform & smooth, while giving the beam an obvious center hot-spot. It is a little tighter and the only reason I could see that you would not like it is if you use it to read with, since the hot-spot would be noticeable. Since the older optic spread out the beam center a bit more it makes it easier to read by, but if you didn't have them side by side then you probably wouldn't even notice this minor detail.

It think the gain is much greater than the loss.

This is in another thread too but here are some close ups of the new & old optics


New one on the left, old one on the right.

Thanks, yet again, Sean! The new optics *do* look great.

The beam does look nice. Do you have pic`s of the mini mag you made?

do you have any of the non-white LSes?...the 'new' optics look exactly like what's in my amber lambertian LSes that's i've had for a couple months...

I agree with Papasan, all five of the LS/O's (1 amber, 4 cyan) I've gotten since October have come with the "new" optics.

All I have are white Luxeons. I believe the color luxeons always came with the "new" style optic collimator.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ken B:
The beam does look nice. Do you have pic`s of the mini mag you made?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Minimag pics
HERE

Sean you say the light output is the same for both your mods w/ and w/o converter circuit? I assume better light longer w/ board? How long do you get good light from direct drive?

Oops! Actually, what I meant was the light output is the same with both mods that are not using the boost circuit. The "3rd" mod uses the boost circuit and is noticeably brighter! The boost circuit version is not shown in detail since it was a pain to get to fit inside the minimag, so I didn't have time to take pictures of that. What I meant on my webpage is that both the mod with the heatsink & without the heatsink are the same brightness (obviously). These use no boost circuit and are connected directly to 2AA cells, lithium cells are not really recommended for the non heatsink version.

It is confusing so I will change the way I state it.