New Convoy C8 – Clearly better

I hope you like the 7A. I don’t see it as very useful outdoors (and I’m happy I didn’t order a throwier light in it), but for indoors up to 10m away, it’s a beaut. Moreso if it’s the one and only light source around.

Might have to get myself a 3A tint sometime. The coolest Convoy I have is 4C tinted, and while I intend to get a 5B C8 with a smooth reflector for further throw than my current C8 in 4C, I had no plans for 3A.

3A and 3D are some of the nicest I’ve come across.

Ostensibly, my S2+ has a 4C, which is a little too warm and yellow as far as the hotspot. Do a ceiling-bounce, and the mix of yellow hotspot and blue spill gives a quite nice overall light. In fact, really nice.

And I think that’s the problem, that in reflector lights, the hotspot is almost always significantly warmer than the spill (think of the typische “fried-egg” beamshot).

I expect it to not be as useful outdoors, but I’m curious to know if the “useful throw” is greater with the 7A than a cooler tint, when it is humid. The warm tint should cut through humidity better than a cool tint and scatter back less light, at least in theory. I wonder if it makes up for the lower output of the 7A.

Funny that we’re thinking a warm tint isn’t useful outdoors, when a couple of decades ago all you could buy was warm tints (incandescent).

Funny. I have an S2 in 4C, and the beam tint is very uniform. Now when I’m using my C8 (also in 4C, despite the OP reflector, I can definitely notice the yellow spot contrasting the whiter spill. Thankfully not a problem when using the C8 for range like the thrower that it is.

Is it less of a concern with cooler tints?

Well when you have a hammer and nothing else, everything becomes a nail :smiley:

If you can test that for us, please keep me posted, because I wanna know too. It’s drought season where I live, and I won’t be able to check the humidity-cutting power of a 7A at full blast until late September, if not later. OTOH, I can definitely say it doesn’t seem to struggle with dust quite as much as even 4C :stuck_out_tongue:

Forgot… does the S2+ have a SMO or OP reflector? All I recall is the rather fuzzy (and large) hotspot.

That’s my guess. You got the blue LED and the phosphor sucks away some of the blue light and reradiates it as yellow, red, etc. (big gap in the bluegreen/teal part of the spectrum).

A cooler LED means a thinner layer of phosphor, and less of a contribution to the total beam. So tint-shift is that much less (it’s there and to the same degree, but it’s a smaller piece of the total pie). A warmer LED with more phosphor and more of a contribution is that much more susceptible.

Will do. Though, it’s back-ordered :frowning: so you might get to test it before me.

Don ’t you just love physics? :smiley:
Anyway, that makes sense. Thanks.

I wouldn’t be so sure. South American savannah’s been known to sometimes see little to no rain from mid-June to late October :confounded:

They’re doing that?

I just want a .45 longslide with laser-sighting…

FWIW, a lighted tailcap will make a Biscotti driver think every button press is a short press. The only way around that is to add a bleeder resistor on the driver, to allow current to pass while it’s “off” without keeping the MCU powered up.

As for throw, blue light scatters in the atmosphere. The scattering effect is proportional to the color temperature raised to the fourth power, or something like that, so cooler tints waste a lot more of their output creating a visible blue beam… and that obscures whatever the light is pointing at. So for a thrower it’s important not to have a cold tint.

Unless you want the thrower to look like a light saber. In that case, get the coldest tint you can find. It’s great fun.

I like the silver flashlight .Silver looks luxurious.

I should’ve specified… 900mW blue laser.

Burns holes in wood, for one thing. Causes INSTANT blindness even with the briefest reflection. Lights up its path in air just from dust and/or humidity.

Oh, but it’ll light up something miles downstream… or on the moon. :smiley:

Seriously, that kind of laser is used to etch wood, and isn’t a toy by any means.

Do you mean because warmer tints generally have higher CRI? (Anyone know the CRI of the 7A Convoy XPL-HI LED?)

Or do you mean that it’s because a warmer tint is better to light up the red and browns in a forest situation?

I can’t think of another reason why a warmer tint provides better contrast (other than scattering mentioned already).

The downside of a warm tint is that it usually has lower lumens. (U3 bin vs V2 bin in the Convoy, which I think it about 25% less output?) So, I’m curious to see if that drop in output is balanced by the upsides.

Anyway, it will be fun to try. Got my shipment notification today. :slight_smile:

Yes, very true. However, there are times I want the light very close to my line of sight: it’s a great way to spot animals (from eye shine), using low output. Creepy, but effective. Okay, sometimes too creepy.

It depends on the cat. Mine figured out the laser immediately, even as a kitten. So when I would try to get him to chase a laser, he would look at the spot, look at the laser in my hand, then give me a look like “Really? How dumb do you think I am?”

It also all but eliminates shadows from your field of view.

I hope not. There’re too many things already “regulated” by nanny-state governments. And you can find a nice powerful laser-diode in any blu-ray recorder.

I keep telling people who want to ban guns that when Terrorists™ start using bombs or even gasoline (anyone skeptical, look up the Happy Land Disco fire: ~80 lives snuffed out with a few gallons of gasoline) to do their nefarious deeds, they’ll be wishing that they’d go back to using guns. And all it takes is one idiot with keys to a truck to go plow through a crowd…

All that might do is to keep some idiot kid from shining a laser at a passing plane… oh, wait, they do that despite it being a federal crime with some serious jailtime attached.

I mean, c’mon, there’s been talk about banning or at least “regulating” 3D printers because of what someone might create. Or requiring any designs to go through some central clearinghouse for inspection first before allowing the object to be printed. (I can imagine the backlog on that… want to build a bike-light bracket, submit your design now, come back in 2021 when it gets approved.)

Too often “government” is the problem, so let’s not automatically look to it for “solutions”.

+1 for your answer Lightbringer!

:+1: :+1:

Sorry, no brighter moon.
Here are the numbers explained from xkcd:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/