Going to show my ignorance here. What is a matte? Is it just an aperture mask?That's exactly what I was talking about. The stripe is caused by the fact that it is a wide emitter, and you're basically imaging this wide emitter somewhere else (ideally, at infinity), and the only way you can improve on that without using anamorphics is by adding a matte.
They decrease your divergence. Right?The downside of anamorphics is that they decrease your focal depth (er, I mean, increase your beam divergence),
I agree wholeheartedly. I even think the 9mm set like this would be cheaper, but I don't think the 9mm diode are substantially more powerful than the m series 445's.but if the cost of a single 9mm 445 plus matte is at the same price point as a dual Nichia 445, with cubes, anamorphics and all of the alignment gribbly-bits, I'd say go for the single 9mm. Easier to set up, more compact, and less that could go wrong.