Originally Posted by
cyccommute
It's not all that hard to project any shape you want. My daughters had lamps when they were little that projected stars and fish and I've seen ones that projected giraffes. Since the bulbs used were just regular 25 to 60 watt pear shaped incandescents and unfocused, I doubt that they were recovering the bulbs original fish or star or giraffe shape.
That may indeed be true, but in the case if high quality, tightly focused beams, it is just retaining the LED's original shape. A high quality optic can collimate the light emitted from the LED very, very well, so that shape isn't lost. If you examine the beam very carefully, on a uniform matte white surface, you can even see the details of the LED die in the beam.