Agreed. But I think scattering off particles in the air is usually significant if not dominant, and that source of scattering would not be wavelength dependent.
All I can say is that in my experience and from many beamshots I’ve seen cooler light of the same focus and brightness has far more backscatter. I’m sure there are many variables to it though.
I have had the same experience. I much prefer warmer tints in my bright, outdoor-use lights. When standing directly behind the light, the scattering from the beam of a cooler tinted light can sometimes completely obscure what you are trying to illuminate. The beam is still visible with warmer tints but the glare seems to be much less prominent.
This is the same reason many people complain about glare with newer HID and LED car headlights that tend to be in cooler tints than your standard halogens.
For me, it’s definitely that the visible backscatter interferes with my ability to see, not that it seems like less light gets to the target. The effect is not significant if I’m looking from a position a couple degrees away from the light source, but that’s longer than my arms in situations that call for a thrower.
It’s a foggy night outside so I took my E07 SST-20 2700K and E07 XP-L HI 5000K outside for the test. I was surprised their reach is about the same. Though the XP-L HI was about double the brightness due to fresh batteries and brighter emitter. When using the 2700K, I get the impression that it penetrates fog better because I don’t see as much fog moving. With the 5000K, the moving fog is much more visible and it takes my eyes a few seconds to adapt to the glare to be able to focus in the distance whereas with the 2700K, I can pretty much see into the distance right away. But the amount of detail and the distance I can see seems identical with both lights to my surprise.
I think a 2000K flashlight might actually make more noticeable difference in fog.
I think a 2000K flashlight might actually make more noticeable difference in fog.
Now that is something I would buy. I lived off the coast of Washington ST. called Anacortes. Its located on Fidalgo Island, in the Pacific Northwest. It is conveniently situated halfway between Seattle and Vancouver BC and is the destination point for the San Juan Islands and International ferry runs. The fog there would get so thick it was like something out of a movie. You could feel it in your lungs it was so thick. I would be very interested in a torch designed just for fog with maybe an adjustable tint if possible.
Then you’d have to go with incan lights. LED produces one color of the spectrum (monochromatic), while incan emits all colors, making them better to pierce through smoke and fog.
Uh, no.
Monochromatic means one wavelength… that’s what a Red LED does for example, at maybe 635nm.
Or a laser, for example 532nm for a green one…
But a white LED emits all visible wavelengths… in a different way than an incan bulb of course, or even the sun
Thanks for the information!
He’s sorta right. The LED is very much just blue light. Only after it’s put under a yellow phosphor with a broad spectrum does it emit what looks like white light.
I have taken photos from behind the beam as well as far off to the side. The beam shots proved to me that a more neutral white (and I do mean an absence of color) shows best. This is, of course, what works for me, in my settings and usages. I throw away any emitter under about 4750 and over 6000K.
(And I use the best cameras and lenses I can afford. The shots posted of the water tower are using about $7000 worth of camera and lens)
Do you mean shows best on target though? I still haven’t ever seen beamshot comparisons that show an equal amount of backscatter from different temps.
This isn’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison but beam profile and output are pretty close:
Wow! The 4000k made the leaves grow!
Following
ZozzV6 beamshots are becoming more reference-like 
Anyway, I get also very disturbed of the backscatter of cooler white emitters. My limit is around 4800K - and then, it HAS to be high CRI, because with lower CRI, there is more ‘angry blue’ in the LED output, which will increase backscattering noticeably. This is why I raised word for the 4500K 90 CRI variant of XHP35 HI (and of course 2700K and 3500K XHP35 HI 90 CRI would be also very welcomed).
And if someone would happen to make an E21A 2000K 95CRI thrower with over 150k candela, I would buy it in the same microsecond 
Hahaha so much output it made the trees think it was summer!
Any updates on the Noctigon K1? Something? Anything? I need my fix! I’m going to go play with my Astrolux mini lol lol. 
These beamshots are very good, but they were not taken the same day, so temperature and humidity could have been very different. To really compare backscatter, we would need beamshots taken within minutes of each other.
Oh. Boy. This looks amazing.
Exactly, I would actually like those photos to be removed from this topic as putting them next to each other in this context might cause some strange opinions to form. I’m sure if pics were taken on the same day difference would not be as great.