Fireflies E07 Nichia... meh

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

My experimentation with CRI leds has been mixed positive. I have bought:

Emisar D4v2 SST20 in 3000k and also one in 4000k
Fireflies e07 219b sw45k

FYI There are still a few e07 Nichias on their website that ship from California.

I think I might be in the group that prioritizes tint over CRI. But, I haven’t given up yet. I appreciate the sw45k, but have some aversion to the magenta tinge. Its less pleasant to me than green, but its so subtle. I almost don’t think about it when I’m outside, even in the snow. Like other tints, I start to obsess about it when I come inside and it starts bouncing off the walls and filling the room. You’d think that this spill effect, if I’m correct about it, is something that could be improved.

What I want to do is try the SST20 and especially the 219b in a slew of other tint bins from 3500k to 5000k. I’m pretty sure that I won’t find solace in warmer tints; I find my 3000k d4v2 to be more like aged newspaper than incandescence. So, in lew of real world testing, I’m asking you knowledgeable folks for advice on what I might like better than the sw45k.

I can see this magenta on the chromatic scale. Its high energy and weird like unicorns and fairies. Why do people prefer it over the sw45, which is still below the bbl? If I stayed similarly below the bbl, but went warmer, maybe I would find that reddish tint to be ok?

Fireflies updated their site a few days ago and claims to be using the SST20 4000k FA3 bin. I read that some people were disappointed with this tint bin, and are still hoping for lower ones. I ordered an e07 and rot66 with it, and might order a second pair, but maybe a better bin will come out?

I bought ten SW40 D200 emitters from Illumn.com, but I don’t know how to build yet. Can anyone comment on this current batch sold by Illumn.com? Do you think I will find the SW40 to be filled with gay pink fairies like the SW45k?

In case its not obvious, I like walking around at night with these large, high CRI lights. I’m asking for what discontinued 219b I would probably like the most, and what the possibility is of a decent sst20 bin coming out that competes with it?

2

You'd probably get better advice if you rewrote your post.

I got to the part where you asked what you might like better than sw45k, and that you might like tint over cri. My thought was Osram.

I have the ROT66 Osram, sw45k, and an SP36 LH351d.

LH351d looks nice, until you turn on the others. Then it looks green.

Osram looks nice, until you turn on the Nichia/LH351d, then you notice the CRI.

Nichia looks warm/rosy. You turn on the LH351d & it looks green. You turn on the Osram & it looks white.

I like all of them, and they're all elite performers in the scheme of things.

SST20 seems worthless to me. 219C 5k reminds me a little of cold fluorescent, but sometimes it's nice. Everyone's got different eyes.

Maybe write what color temp, what tint, and what CRI you're looking for. I got to the end of the post & it seems like you're talking about conflicting questions

3

I’m interested in the Osram but think there must be some better lights with them than Fireflies. Also 6000 and 6500k seems really cool.

Thanks for the comparison but this doesn’t seem to make sense?

You didn’t mean that LH351d makes the Nichia look green, and Osram makes the Nichia look white?

4

I used to think that anything over 5k would be too blue.

If someone asked me, ‘which one of your flashlights is white?’, I would say the Osram ROT66, or the BLF Q8. The ROT66 is like a sheet of printer paper, the Q8 a little like eggshell (or very mild yellow white, like a shade of daylight), to me.

If I start in a dark room, and turn on the sw45k, it looks a little rosy. A little like I imagine a 4500k ‘should’ look, but with a hint of rosy-ness.

Switch to the LH351d quickly. The LH351d looks green. If I start with the LH351d the the green hint is very slight. If I had never seen/compared with another light, I probably would not think that it looked green at all.

Switch to the Osram quickly. The Osram looks white. The Osram (to me) pretty much always looks white. Like a sheet of printer paper. If I start with the Osram it looks white.

When outdoors and moving around, it becomes harder for me to notice the differences in tint, and the differences in CRI become more easy to notice.

So far, for me, there are no perfect lights, and different environments will make different lights look better/worse suited.

Kind of like audio… one set of headphones sound great. Then you try another and they sound a little different, maybe it’s ‘better’, maybe it’s ‘worse’. It’s subjective. Then a different song comes on & the results change completely and you realize that it shouldn’t matter as much as enjoying the song.

I think I’m confused about what you’re asking for. I think you’re asking for a high-cri, neutal tint, 3500-5000k emitter. In my mind, as the temperature veers away from ~5k the tint will always be there (whether yellow, orange, green, pink, etc.). Like, I would not describe ~sunset as neutral (white) light. Maybe it is my lack of understanding sunlight color temperatures, tint-shift, vocabulary, eyes, or nuance. If you like green>rosy, keep trying sst20s? Personally the light I use the most is a 5000k 219b d4, and think a 4k sst20 d4v2 is beginning to look like indoor lighting, not sunlight. On turbo it looks pretty nice, but at lower levels… x.x

What do you think of your 4k sst20 d4, and other lights you’ve used? Maybe other, more experienced, users can get a feel for what you like/want when you talk about what you like/dislike. Also the D_T_A_ youtube channel is great for comparing side-by-side tints.

5

Exactly the same experience, hate the cooler SST20, i own a D4 with SST20 3000k, that one is nice though. Warm but nice

6

Mentioning ledbrands without led type, tint and CRI does not help. What is referred to by “Osram” ? Which temperature/CRI is the “LH351D” mentioned. A little preciseness helps getting the right information across.

7

I’m not familiar with the Osram & LH351d bins. I think I mentioned first that they were from the ROT66 (gen II) & BLF SP36 Anduril, respectively. Fireflies describes the Osram as, W2 6P, 6500k. Sofirn describes the LH351d as 5000k 90 CRI. I don’t know enough about the individual models or production histories to feel comfortable suggesting bins. I believe that the ROT66 came from the original group buy; the SP36 was bought 11/11/2019. I’m not sure what the current community consensus is about the Osram emitter/bin casual naming.

Sorry for derailing your thread OP.

8

I see. No derailing going on, there were just some missing pieces of information :slight_smile:

9

I notice the pink in the sw45k too. Might like the sw45 better, but I don’t have any. I love the SST-20 4000K in the FW3A, whatever bin that is.

10

That’s probably the FA3 bin that Fireflies claims to have now. I’m tempted to by multiples of them if they might run out.

11

Might be easier to get a Lee filter pack and experiment with cleaning up the color tint of the lights you have by using the correct filter.

Binning is not exactly a precise thing, emitters from the same reel will look different in use. Emitters from new reels can look quite different but carry the same binning tags. So it’s easier in the end to address the deficiency with a photo filter.

I like white, pure white with no discernible tint in either direction. I want a multi-thousand dollar wedding dress to look white when lit by the emitter in question. But yeah, no such luck. I’ve modified somewhere around 1000 lights, I have over 250 lights here now, white is not easy to come by.

12

You made me interested Osram more and less in lh351d. I read others say its slightly green, even without comparing it to something else. And its only 90 cri.

Thing is, some people start to read in the middle of the thread, and miss some information.

13

I have tried the LH351D in 80 CRI and 70 CRI with higher output. I actually prefer the W6 5000K at 70 CRI to the U6 5000K 80 CRI. I have yet to see a green tint and I’ve used over 50 of these. To each his/her own I suppose.

14

The lh351d doesn’t seem to excel in any particular role.

To recap, I want something as spectacular as the sw45k with less pink. I’m hoping that another 219b like the sw45 might be it, or maybe the SST20 in a good bin like FA3.

I can’t understand why someone would want the sw45k with all this pink and not the sw45?

15

I worked pretty hard to build my titanium quad EDC, carry it every waking moment. It’s sporting LH351D W6 500K emitters as a personal preference. To my photographer eyes these are as near ideal as I’ve found, and I’ve bought well over $10,000 in flashlights and related parts.

Always a matter of perception of course.

16

Interesting, but I think I want to try the e21a before the lh351d.

17

I’m proud to announce that I modded my first flashlight today with a 219b sw40 d200 emitter. I went into my dad’s garage and looked at his old flashlights. One of them happened to use a 16mm driver and even had silicone wires. Its completely absurd because its just a tiny aaa flashlight. I’m sure that this is one of the handful he bought when he was visiting south Korea. I want to send it modded to him in time for Christmas and that will probably have to be tomorrow. Oh, well.

I’m blown away by how it seems to light up 50 yards pretty well.




18

19

20

Awesome! Please give us an update on how you like it after you get used to it