FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Don’t explain how to do that (gaming). I could easily, but I won’t.

Yes, you keep making that very clear.

“Guys, I know exactly how murder someone and get away with it, but I’d never do that.”

I think TK would easily catch me out. She’s much too clever to be fooled by an obvious ploy.

5000k Samsung ………. 4000K Samsung

So is that a brown wall, brown shutter, and brown floor as the 4000K makes it look, or is there a white floor, blue/grey shutter and oatmeal wall, as the 5000K shows?

This is what makes me wonder why anyone has a preference for high cri in a warm cct, if it makes everything that does not have a stark colour look brown, what use is the cri? To me it is like having a magnificent variety in your exotic fish tank, and preferring to keep the water dirty.

:+1: - :question:

Far too much green gum (how much do you chew ?)

Did you leave your camera on auto white balance ? Seems to have tried to keep the green gum green (typical behaviour, the natural world is mostly green, so digicams are biased to make it look so)

Not that this means much, use you’re eyes.

By the way, there is a lot more colour in the 4000K shot, even though it is completely wonky.

High CRI makes photos look brownish, but that is not what happens in reality. Photo’s are a pretty poor way of showing tint, let go CRI. (but admittedly there is nothing else on the internet).

:smiley: … :+1: … Interesting analogy, +1:slight_smile:

Tom Tom they’re not my photos (or my gum), read higher up in the thread

I personally want to try to choose the highest efficacy for eye-strain sensitive individuals such as myself, definitely planning on its use as a bike light around others.

Having said that, and seeing other’s opinions. I was wondering the efficacy values per watt (Lux/watt) in a 1m square 15m from the light with the different emitters.
Assuming it’s the XPL-hi, and that many on the list are quite vocal of the color rendering characteristics, and some wanting warmer and cooler light,

I am of the assumption that the end result is going to be a tail-switch throwier handheld version of an armytek wizard XHP50 warm, or at least the wizard’s color temp is bang-on, cooler but not too cool compared to an xpl-5D I’ve seen in my brothers blf a6.

Would an XPL-4D or 4C or 5A1/A2 or 5B1/B2, XPLAWT-H0-0000-000LV20E4
be of consideration for the emitter choice?

The differences you are seeing in the photo is based on white balance of the camera (4500k)
the LED that is a higher color temp than the white balance, looks whiter, bluer, cooler
the LED that is a lower color temp than the white balance, looks browner, yellower, warmer

There is no one True White. It changes based on how closely the LED color temperature, matches the white balance of the users brain at the time.

People who have been in the sun, have their brains auto white balance set to 5500k, so they will prefer 5000k led to 4000k led, at that time. Myself included.

otoh, people who have been sitting under incandescent light (3000k), and whose brain has auto white balanced to that color temperature (takes over 30 minutes for our brain to lower it white balance), will prefer 4000k instead of 5000k, because the 5000k will be too blue.

If Im working on a car in the sun, I prefer 5000k (or even 6000k), and hate 4000k

otoh, my home lighting is 3000k, and when my brain has had time to white balance itself to that color temperature, I HATE 6000K (AND 5000k), and I much prefer 4000k.

I notice that I like my flashlight to be close to, or slightly above the CCT that my brain has adapted its white balance to.

When I wake in the dark for a toilet run, I prefer 3000k, find 4000k too harsh, glaring, blueish, and I wont use 5000k or 6000k at all.

The rule of thumb is to choose a flashlight that is not warmer than the white balance of the users brain at the time.

since I actually seldom work on cars, my need for 5000k or 6000k is rare.
since I live under incandescent light, when I use a flashlight at night, I find 5000k or 6000k unnecessarily cool, and prefer 4000k, so I usually buy 4000k more than 5000k, but I like to have a range of choices for the different environments and ambient light situations I use a flashlight in.

Since the majority of my use is at night, if I had to pick 4000k or 5000k, I would go with 4000k.
But if the majority of my use was during daylight, I would choose 5000k.

What I actually do, is I edc 5000k during the day, and 4000k at night.
on my nightstand is a 3000k light, that I prefer when I wake in the dark. I dont usually edc 3000k, because it is not as versatile as 4000k.
I edc 4000k more often than 5000k, because most of my use is at night, when Im adapted to incandescent.

choices are good. It is useful to carry a flashlight that is not warmer than the white balance of my brain, at the time of use.

when I use warmer light, I also tend to use lower lumens, and when I need higher lumens, I tend to also be using cooler light.

So, I would buy a 4000k Samsung, and a 5000k Samsung, both in 90 CRI. I wont settle for Low CRI, at any color temperature.

Low CRI, and also low R9 CRI, make reds look brown.
It is easy for low CRI to illuminate green and blue things, those are not a challenge for an LED. The Challenge color for an LED is RED
which of these two red things look more brown:

the top one is more brown, it is the 5000k. That tells me the bottom light, 4000k has more CRI, or more R9 CRI (the saturated RED portion of the CRI indexes)
However, both of those lights are 80 CRI, and both could do a better job of showing more Red, and less brown

That was the original question Zmoose… about the backgrounds & foreground. I like your fish tank analogy too. :smiley: … I wonder the same at times.

Give me a true ’neutral white’ as much as possible. (4000K is not ‘neutral white’ AFAIAC) One not tinted warm nor cool.
There is that “preference thing” again. :wink:
.
Edit: @ jon_slider…… The above, though fairly complicated to implement for mere mortals; makes a bit of sense amongst all this ‘discussion’. :wink: Thanks for sharing…….

I’ve always thought that nichia looks dull & dirty , seems to me high cri is very similar.

Are you sure you want to use the FW3A as a bike light? There are much better choices out there.

The site does support that, but it’s an option I didn’t enable. Perhaps if there are any other polls in the future, it would be a useful UI improvement even if it makes no difference in the results.

It’s immune or resistant to most forms of tactical voting, but can sometimes still be affected by burying. It’s a relatively small risk though, and requires a significant number of voters to understand and apply the strategy or at least follow instructions from someone who told them how to vote.

If I were to make an upgrade to the voting system, it wouldn’t involve a big change in the algorithm… it would be to simply make it a private vote which requires a login. However, for an informal poll like this, I think it would be a net loss because it would exclude too many people. It’s simply not necessary unless someone actually puts in the effort to execute a non-trivial ballot-stuffing attack. And only one person has threatened anything like that.

As long as nobody intentionally breaks it, it works. So don’t be that guy. Don’t be the reason we can’t have nice things.

XP-L HD doesn’t fit into the optics. The closest choice is LH351D, which performs much like the XP-L2 but without the nasty rainbow effect.

People have very different preferences for ideal color temperature. What looks white to one person may look brown or blue to another. It’s known to correlate with age or sun exposure, so people tend to prefer higher CCTs as they get older, but this is only a loose correlation. Have you ever seen old ladies with blue hair? It doesn’t look blue to them; that’s what they view as white.

Me, I usually avoid warm CCTs because they look painfully yellow to me. But I think it’s definitely a good idea to make something warm-ish available, like 4000K, because a lot of people really like it.

Well Currently the D4 is my bike light, it used to be my wizard xD

@toykeeper, I meant the XPL-hi

Interesting take on colour perception TK, I always wondered about the blue rinse phenomenon, but isn’t it the other way round with age, I get the impression the older members here are the ones more likely to prefer the warmer, lower cct values?

Anything above the blackbody line is probably not happening, because it would look green. So, no “B” or “C” tints.

Early poll results made 4A the top choice, but it shifted later so now the vote points toward 3D. That means 4D or 5A are unlikely unless Lumintop decides to offer a bunch of options like Emisar does. The data so far points toward 5000K (or slightly below) for XP-L HI and toward 4000K for LH351D.

This is a strange phenomenon that I have gathered some info while working in biology.

Apparently, cyan photoreceptors have a lower lifespan than magenta and yellow, because they tend to absorb higher frequency wavelengths, which are more energetic and destroy the photoreceptors more quickly than the others.

Therefore, with age, there is degeneration of the cyan photoreceptors resulting in lower sensitivity in the blue part of the visible light spectrum, meaning you see less intense blue as you age, explaining what Toykeeper said.

Anyway, this phenomenon also happens in OLED displays: being organic, the blue pixels degrade more quickly than red and yellow. This is why instead of an RGB stripe arrangement, we get Diamond Stripe Pixel arrangement. This allows for lower degradation, but a lower effective resolution.