Didn’t know any better…….at the time. Oops.
Totally agree with this, it’s the most important thing to me. I don’t like Blue/Green or Orange/Yellow emitters either. Have a couple high CRI EDC lights I built and 80 CRI XHP35/50/70 high performance lights I built and I’m not that impressed with them. But that’s just me.
I have a handful of Nichia lights (triple 219c in S2+, BLF-348, Reylight Pineapple, other Convoy host with single Nichia 219B) and I just dont like them. I much prefer a warm/neutral light for actual use (my favorite is an XM-L2 U3-3D)
Tint and beam pattern are far more relevant to me than CRI. Not only that, but high CRI usually means more heat…and I use my lights for work too much to deal with a light too hot. I bought my D4 with the XPL-Hi emitters not because of the increase in output…but because it runs cooler (if you can even call it that)
I totally get that heat is a big issue with running the Nichia LED’s at higher output.
What is it about the lights you mentioned that you dislike?
This is the way I think too. The only exception being tint.
I am usually ok anywhere from 4750K - 6100K, with the sweet spot being between 5000K & 5700K. All below the BBL.
“Marketing gimmick”…. Yep, I’d go along with that as well as the rest of what you both said. :+1:
I kind of don’t get some of the talk about temp, tint, beam, etc., as if they’re somehow mutually exclusive from high CRI?
Certainly those are all important factors, but it’s not like Nichias or other high CRI emitters only come in one take-it-or-leave-it awful temp/tint combo…
I’ll also add that I find some “standard” emitters quite nice if the other attributes are otherwise lined up with my preferences. But all else being equal, I’d still take the better color rendition as well if I could get it.
There are no “wrong” answers here though imo. Tastes, needs vary. I was a little confused why they aren’t the standard insisted on by enthusiasts, but the responses are helping to inform on why that isn’t necessarily the case.
I can deal with that opinion, but it’s a silly one, imo. CRI is a real, measurable property; not some kind of trickery. That’s like me saying Neutral White emitters are just a marketing gimmick. -???
Well, the truth is that most normally-sighted humans can detect a difference in tint or color temp. But, at least if you go according to this thread, a lot of us can’t see a difference in CRI, at least not enough to care, and certainly not enough to concern ourselves with demanding high CRI from flashlight makers.
Sure CRI is a real measurable property, but that’s not the point. In my experience high CRI makes VERY little difference in how pleasing or effective the light output is. As such, I consider the benefits of high CRI to be very overblown.
The characterization of the tint being neutral or cool is immediately obvious and is much more significant to me than CRI.
- I hate cool-white tints and do my best to steer clear of them. I always buy neutral if its an option, and if not I tend to always mod my lights to neutral. The only lights I have that I occasionally use that are still cool white are my shaved-dome SST40 lights… and then only because there’s no alternative.
- I dislike greenish tints and prefer tints below the BBL. However, I may still use them if the light has other benefits. Example: my Zebralight SC600w IV Plus. Fantastic light with tremendous output. More useful than a D4 due to current regulation and better temp management. Run both lights for a minute on turbo and the Zebralight will be much brighter than the D4. The D4 only pulls ahead when run for 30 seconds or less.
- Most of the time, I can’t see the difference in CRI at all unless I compare the beams of a high-CRI light side-by-side with a lower-CRI light of similar tint. Essentially, high-CRI seems to offer virtually no noticeable benefit. Unless using a light for a task where color rendering must be as accurate as possible (such as photography) I’d steer clear of high-CRI.
- Much more noticeable to me is that the high-CRI LEDs tend to have very significant tradeoffs: enormously lower output for the nichias, greenish tint for the Zebralight SC64c (so I hear… don’t own one myself), or overly warm tint for some of the older CREES (have some 90-CRI 3000K XML2s laying around…. too warm for me).
I won’t turn down high-CRI if a light has it. But I don’t go out of my way to select for high-CRI either. My newest light received today is actually high CRI (Zebralight headlamp H604C 4000K 90CRI, 1616 lumens). I selected this model over the higher lumen neutral white model not because it was high-CRI, but because it was 4000K, which I prefer for headlamp use. Here’s hoping this zebra is below the BBL.
On micro-sized lights, I go for higher CRI.
On the bigger lights, high CRI and warmer tints just make everything look like it’s covered in urine.
I really notice CRI outside of some manmade environments where all the colors are really flat. Low-CRI lighting just looks desaturated, though I’ll admit I don’t necessarily notice as quickly as I might detect a color temperature or severe off-tint that’s not to my liking.
As Cree has been demonstrating lately, high measured CRI is not necessarily sufficient for light to be pleasant to use or to match colors with natural lighting. I want decent tint with my high CRI.
With my BLF pen light working on my cars, I really appreciate the better colors. Sometimes makes the difference of being able to see small parts/wires.
But if I’m trying to dump out over 5K lumens, the contrast isn’t as useful, especially if the beam is extremely floody. If I had a mule, I’d want a tint as cold as my ex-wife’s heart.
2 Thumbs up to Firelight2
I find that warm, low-CRI lighting can make the world look like a great dog marked it, especially with a green off-tint, but high CRI and a non-green tint don’t have that effect at all to my eyes.
Sunlight at midday is roughly 5000K and 100 CRI with so many lumens it hardly even makes sense to use that unit to quantify it. Does daylight look like pee to you as well?
It’s not mutually exclusive. It’s just a relatively small factor in the equation. If one were to write out the qualities which make a light good, as an actual formula, CRI would have a pretty small coefficient. Like, maybe it accounts for 5% of the total. If a beam is already 90% as good as it could be, adding an extra 5% via a high-CRI emitter is a big improvement. But if the other factors only add up to 30, adding an extra 5 doesn’t help much. That effort is better spent on improving one of the factors with a bigger coefficient.
There’s a similar rule in programming. Unrolling loops can help make a program run faster… but one should never actually do it unless all other optimizations have already been made, like making sure the algorithm is the most efficient one available. Only then does it make sense to break out the finishing touches like loop-unrolling.
Yes, all other things being equal, high CRI will generally look better than low CRI. But the other things are usually not equal.
I suspect “world looking like pee” has much more too do with color temperature and the position of the tint near the BBL than it does CRI.
I should revise my earlier statement, which said “I don’t.”
The last light I bought was a BLF Q8, which isn’t high CRI. It’s still pretty nice though. I’ve had a 3D-printed lantern diffuser on it for the past few months, which warms the tint and reduces the CRI even more, but it looks more like an actual candle that way. It gets used quite a bit in candle mode.
So I guess I do buy lights without high-CRI emitters.
But when I want the best tint, I use my triple 219B lights. Particularly one with a Moonlight Special driver, since it doesn’t have the typical FET tint shift.
Or if I want really vivid color, I still haven’t found anything better than my BST-wide. It makes colors more vivid than even a 100CRI light source. It really brings out shades which aren’t normally visible.
would you be OK with High CRI if it had good tint and good beam pattern, in a color temperature you consider “white” and was not too hot?
they are definitely separate factors, but why settle for less than the best of all the features?
different environments will change how our brain white balances, what looks orange during the day, can look white at night
and what looks white during the day can look blueish at night
there is no single color temperature for all ambient light settings
I only buy lights with Low CRI if I plan to modify them. I dont like using lights with negative R9, so NW is not good enough, and CW is usually Low CRI, so I dont like that. I use my lights mostly in the dark times of day. I can understand if I was working on a car, in the sun, then a bright CW light might be needed.
you can have brightest, or highest CRI
I will trade bright, for good color, because I care about the spectrum balance I use, indoors, close range, with red things
green foliage is not a good test of CRI, in fact CW is better for Green Foliage alone, but not for bark and dirt colors
even how green a tint is, will change based on the white balance of the users brain at the time
Look at the difference in R9 with Low CRI vs High CRI
here is a skillhunt h03 NW, it has good tint, and low CRI
compare the R9 of the Lumintop Tool w N219b, it has good tint and High CRI
Well sure.
If you presented me two different identical lights that had identical lumens, beam patterns, color temperature, and nice below-BBL tint and the only difference between the two was one was high-CRI and the other was not… then of course I would take the high-CRI option.
The problem is that almost never actually happens. High CRI usually comes at the cost of lumens, color temperature, intensity, and/or greenish tint.
I agree that more CRI (red lumens) means less Bright (green lumens), for equal runtime, or the high CRI can be as bright as the Low CRI, but trades for less runtime, to get High CRI at same brightness
and agree High CRI is often warmer CCT (4000k) than Cool White (6000k)
how many lumens do you need and what color temperature do you like?
in my experience, green tint is much more common with Cree than Nichia, and green tint is much more common on cooler lights than warmer ones. I would go so far as to say green tint is more common with Low CRI
intensity sounds like lumens, so thats already covered above, or Im unclear on the difference
HDS makes the same light w N219b 4000k High CRI, max output 200 lumens for 1 hour, or XP-G2 6000k low CRI 250 lumens for 1 hour, with green tint. Same body, same reflector, same battery, same size, same weight, identical except for 50 low cri lumens.
I would take the N219b, but, most people will say they want the one with the most throw, so they will buy the green tinted low cri, since they dont understand those details. And they certainly have no idea that the R9 values are vastly different.
Once they get the memo that High CRI makes for hotter Sex, they might begin to appreciate the waste of 50 green tinted low cri lumens.
another example
I have an Olight S Mini Low CRI, Cool White, green tint, and an
S1 Mini High CRI, Cool White green tint.
I use the High CRI more, almost never use turbo on either light, most of my use is indoors, close range, lower levels. CRI is the deal Maker for my usage scenario.
If you use the light in the bedroom, CRI rules
If youre just strobing cars to direct traffic, then Low CRI is much more aggravating, brighter, and may or may not elicit compliance sooner
marketing spin
High CRI is Sexier than Low CRI!
lol