Anyone get an L1P without the AR coating?

Read a few posts from people who got L1P v2.5 that didn't have an AR coating, or at least one that was easy to see. I got my L1P v2.5 today and also don't think it has the AR coating. Tried looking for it in all different conditions and don't see it. Right next to a white piece of paper, the reflection looks white, not blue or purple like expected.

Just wondering if any one else out there are getting L1Ps without the coating. Could the factory have put the wrong head on the light? I don't know how else to differentiate the L1P head from the L1 head other than the lens. I guess what worries me about this is if I have an L1 head on my L1P then I'm losing the lens coating as well as the R-bin LED.

I don't see any coating either. Bus has HAIII-anodizing and is wonderful light!

Mine arrived yesterday.

I have carefully inspected the lens under many types lighting. I pay particular attention to light reflected off the lens itself.

Incandescent- No AR detected.
LED- No AR detected.
Warm Flourescent- At times there appears to be a slight blue tint to the lens. Very subtle.
Outdoors, bright fully overcast skies- At times there appears to be a slight blue tint to the lens reflections. Again, very subtle.

At no time were easily visible blue, pink, purple or green coloration visible in the lens reflections.

Over the years I have owned many cameras, binoculars, telescopes, and eyepieces. My amateur judgement: The AR is either not present or is extremely subtle.

This thing still rocks :rock:

TR (wondering aloud what this baby would do with a choice AR Coating)

I read in one of the posts that someone bought a couple of l1p v2.5s, and that some of them had the AR and some didn't. If you're that person, were the ones without AR just as bright as the ones with? Did it just look like the wrong lens was put on or maybe the wrong LED as well?

Does anyone know if the L1 v2.5 black have a significantly different finish from the L1P black that they can be told apart?

Thanks!

Mine obviously has the AR coating, or at least some kind of coating. If I look down into the lens while it's positioned in such a manner that a powered flourescent light is visible, that light looks decidedly pinkish or purplish. On every flashlightlens.com UCL I've had, the same flourescent bulbs look greenish.

And if hold the Fenix pointing right at me but turned off and hold another bright flashlight in such a manner that it is shining on the Fenix lens and is being reflected back into my eyes, that reflection is much dimmer than if I do the same thing with a flashlight that I know doesn't have an AR coating.

Still, in the scheme of things, I wouldn't care one way or the other about the AR coating as long as it did have a mineral glass lens.

The AR coating of the new batch Fenix lights is really different from previous ones'. Some one might have found it in the group buy in last batch. It is said that in order to let the AR coating not take on purple color (The purple color will influence the pure white light), Fenix changes coating technology designedly to achieve this purpose. However, the permeate rate of it is higher than that of common glass.
In fact, there is slight blue tint however, but not obvious

Hold the light chest high and about a foot in front of you. Point the light directly toward the ceiling and turn it on. You'll see a thin streak of color on the opposite side of the reflector (it's green on mine). It's actually white on the reflector, but it takes on the color of the coating as it passes through the lens.

I got a L1P from 4sevens GB and I believe it has the coating but I can only tell when looking at the side of the light when it is on it has a bluish tint to the beam off the side of the reflector.... anywhere near straight on it looks white to m.

Lynx-Arc......Great minds think alike!:wow:

nikon.... great eyes see alike too...

Well guys...Mine came from the recent group buy and I guess I have to join the club. I'm not sure if mine has the AR coating or not. All my other lights and lenses are very obvious with their AR coatings.

I'll have to do some more investigations while the light is ON as Nikon suggested to check if I see what he sees. I don't think I've looked at it while it was actually powered.

One thing to note...even if the AR coating is "invisible" or hard to see - it sure seems to be doing a good job regardless. When I look straight into the reflector, it looks like there is no glass at all. Just like with all my other AR coated lenses (except cameras) - and exactly what they look like when looking perpendicular into the lens - straight on.. Sooooooo......

I guess the jury is still out on this?!

nikon said:

Hold the light chest high and about a foot in front of you. Point the light directly toward the ceiling and turn it on. You'll see a thin streak of color on the opposite side of the reflector (it's green on mine). It's actually white on the reflector, but it takes on the color of the coating as it passes through the lens.

Click to expand...

I tried this trick, but don't see any colored streaks. Maybe I could imagine there are streaks there, but I'd just be fooling myself. Think anybody could take a picture of how the AR coating looks on theirs?

Hi Bcwang,

Did somebody say "picture"?

Sure..

Here's a side pic of the AR coating reflecting a flourescent tube. You can see the tube as two purple lines in the middle of the lens:


Here's a head-on view of the same light. You can see just the faintest purple tinge at the edges of the light:


When shined very close to an object, there is a very noticable purple ring at the extreme edge of the spill beam:


I got two Fenix L1P's. I kept one for myself and gave the other to my wife. Mine is the one you see above and has a very noticable, heavy coating. My wife's light has the coating as well, but it is much more faint. It only appears as the slightest greenish, opalescent tinge when viewing a light source reflected from the side as done in the first picture.

Her light also does not have the colored ring at the edge of the spill beam. The picture of my ring simply does not do it justice. My ring looks like a perfect ring of a near-UV LED. At first, I thought the phosphor was thin on the sides of the LED die, but then I remembered that Luxeons use a blue die. The color of which is a very deep blue like this:


That pic is from a Luxeon Flash (LXCL-PWF1) which had its phosphor layer "carefully" scraped off with an Xacto knife.

Larger images of the Fenix AR coating are on my site here and a larger image of the Lux Flash are here.

pb

Edited to fix my image tags.

bcwang said:

Read a few posts from people who got L1P v2.5 that didn't have an AR coating, or at least one that was easy to see. I got my L1P v2.5 today and also don't think it has the AR coating. Tried looking for it in all different conditions and don't see it. Right next to a white piece of paper, the reflection looks white, not blue or purple like expected.

Just wondering if any one else out there are getting L1Ps without the coating. Could the factory have put the wrong head on the light? I don't know how else to differentiate the L1P head from the L1 head other than the lens. I guess what worries me about this is if I have an L1 head on my L1P then I'm losing the lens coating as well as the R-bin LED.

Click to expand...

I may be wrong but AR coated doesn't always mean u will always get the effect of a multi-coated lens. Take for example, my fortis watch is AR coated and it really did well cos looking directly at the watch face, the glass is almost non-existent but then the glass doesn't display those blue/green reflection when view at an angle to a light source. So i guess the later batch of Fenix maybe using new type of AR coating that did their job but without those traditional blue/green reflections.

Rgrds,
Daniel

AR coating doesn't have to have any color at all, it's something added by the manufacturer. AR coating was discovered by accident back in the 1940's when it was observed that older Leitz (Leica) camera lenses were passing more light than they did when new. A layer of colorless oxidation had formed on the glass which kept light from scattering when it hit the surface of the lens. Less reflection = greater transmission.

Nikon. You're right on! I guess the big concern here is that most every lens we've come across (for flashlights) that has an AR coating on it is very obviously AR coated.

Anyone who bought the L1P knew they were paying a premium for higher output and the AR coated lens - but my fear is that there may have been some units that escaped the factory that may not have had the correct lens installed.

I've obsessively looked at reflections in mine and I can barely see a purple tint to some reflections. The AR coating is definitely thin on my unit if it's there at all. I'm not totally convinced it's there yet. :ironic:

It looks NOTHING like the reflections shown in the pictures that pbarrette posted.

I will admit though - again - that when looking head-on into the reflector I can't see the glass, so regardless, it seems to be high quality glass. :shrug:

Packetstorm,

Like I said.. My particular unit has a very, very thick and noticable coating which is why I was able to take the pictures. My wife's Fenix, on the other hand, still has the coating but it is only barely noticable.

If you see a slight iridescent sheen in the glass while it is reflecting a light source, and it is greenish to purpleish in color, then your lens is most likely AR coated. My SF-E1e has a coated lens, but it too is barely noticable even if you are looking for it.

Also, the color of an AR coating is not "added" by the manufacturer of the coating. Instead, it is a byproduct of the way that AR coatings work. From Wikipedia, the simplest method of AR coating is a single layer of thin film (usually a metal oxide) which is 1/4 wavelength thick and has an index of refraction which is the square root of the index of refraction of the substrate material (the glass). As you can see, this method would be targeted at a specific wavelength only. However, if that wavelength is in the middle of the visible band, the extremely small variations in the thickness of the AR layer and the refractive index of the glass means that it usually also works on nearby wavelengths.

Other coatings are possible with multiple layers of different materials at different thicknesses calculated to cancel out reflections and amplify transmissions. However, they all work on the same principle. Also, it is likely impossible to completely remove the reflections from all of the wavelengths of the visible spectrum at all angles. Usually, the AR coating is chosen such that the viewing angle is 0 degrees. This means that with off axis viewing, such as with my first picture, you are likely to see a color that has been reflected off-axis from the lens at a specific wavelength.

pb

I received two premiums, and neither gives visible clues of being coated. The light from one is perfectly white. The other has a slight green tinge and isn't as bright. Can anyone who has the non-premium and premium advise as to whether the P is both brighter AND whiter? (Reading between the lines...is the greener one a standard rather than P, or did I just lose the luxeon lottery?).

I own many watches with AR, and a bluish "rainbow" effect is usually apparent.