Why do you buy lights without High-CRI emitters?

I have generally found that emitter characteristics work like a dart board. Here’s how the concepts map:

  • Color temperature is which concentric ring the dart lands in. The center is neutral white, and the outer rings are increasingly warm or cool.
  • Tint is the angle of rotation, like whether it hits at 2-o’clock or 7 o’clock. Some tints look better than others.
  • CRI is how close the dart is to the center of the cell it landed in. It certainly helps, but not generally as much as the other factors.

Nice analogy Toykeeper.

Yep. :crown: :+1:

:+1:

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I do appreciate all of the discussion though. I’ve learned some new things and it’s spurred me to examine other things more closely.

CRI seems to me a blunt and rather useless measure of how the individual’s eyes see things.

LEDs are a big compromise, they use a mix of phosphors to try to replicate a continuous spectrum, hopefully to match with human eye’s rod and cone response, which varies.

And leave big gaps between them, hoping they will not be noticed.

Likewise digital camera sensors use colour filter arrays over a wide-spectrum sensor, to try to get “nice” colours. Then we struggle to reproduce them on un-calibrated monitors with different colour filter arrays, but somehow it mostly works, the human eye and brain is very forgiving.

Try lighting a scene with LEDs and shooting it with a digital camera, critically, and you might realise why flashes, or halogens, (or even daylight), with continuous spectrum, still rule.

Bottom line: trust your eyes (even my left one is different from the right), and choose what suits you, not because of some simplistic CRI number, or popular LED brand name.

Don’t misunderstand, I am as fascinated with tints etc. as most, and have strong opinions, but CRI doesn’t seem very relevant to me, other things dominate in practice, particularly at low light levels, when everything changes, to the human eye, rather than to a measuring instrument.

Definitely not. I tried, but it’s too many and too much scrolling lol. “E” stood out to me the most though (and then as soon as I quoted you I realized I shouldn’t have as all the file names showed :innocent: :partying_face: )

This is my guess TK. And I stress the word “guess”… :smiley:

Lowest to highest CRI……

1. G
2. B
3. A
4. C
5. E
6. D
7. F

Before I forget…

In the pics above, the CRI is (approximately):

  1. F: 65 (cheap SK-68 ~7000K)
  2. G: 70 (XM-L2 3C thrower hotspot)
  3. C: 70 (XM-L 1A floody)
  4. A: 75 (XP-G2 3B floody)
  5. E: 91 (219b, reflector)
  6. D: 93 (219b, reflector + diffuser)
  7. B: N/A (wide-spectrum, looks like >100 CRI)

I don’t have very precise stats on these, so the numbers are pretty rough.

In person it’s easier to guess the CRI, but after a trip through a camera and a screen, most of the extra color information has been discarded so it’s hard to tell which is which.

1 Thank

Without seeing the reveal, here’s the order I put them in:

EDABCGF

I figured the wide-spectrum light would be in there, but I didn’t try to ID it. I have a suspicion it wouldn’t actually test very high for CRI, but might have a higher Rg (gamut). The reds look a little off with it compared to the 219Bs.

Edit: that’s H->L for the order.

That last photo from Toykeeper and the posts by firelight2 sum it up for me. High CRI without also having your preferred colour temp and tint is pointless.

I have two astrolux A01 lights, supposedly both with high CRI Nichia 219, yet one is too cool and washes out the colours, the other too warm and muddies the colours. I dont like either, as far as I am concerned I want colours to look real and natural, and a 70 CRI neutral temp smashes a 90 CRI with noticeably off neutral tint out of the park every time.

I have a neutral 90CRI on the way, and will be very interested to compare it to my other neutral lights, but honestly, I’m not expecting to see much difference.

This discussion has been very educational & thought provoking to me.
The photos by TK are very helpful also.

Her photos & all the discussion illustrates ’to me’, as Zulumoose said; without your preferred Color Temp & Tint…. High CRI does not mean squat. :wink:

Founder’s Harvest Ale backlit by S42 w/ Nichia on my ancient Note 4. :smiley:
(Then the file was stepped on hard by tinypic… :frowning: )

Cheers, happy Friday!

“The End Of The World”? :smiley:

I just got another case of Warsteiner Dunkel. It’s gooooooood drinkin’!

Actually, first in a long time. Winter ain’t B33r Season…

Nice! I just had some Dunkel a few weeks ago.

Yep, good stuff…

Winter is more for Rumpleminze and Clement Orange Shrubb. :smiley:

Ooooooh, I wonder how the Shrubb would look lit up from behind by some nice 2000K LEDs. Not high-CRI by a longshot, but…

Rumpleminze is clear, and minty, so a CW would look quite nice lighting up the bottle. :smiley:

Forgot who it was, djozz?, who had a high-CRI CW LED, like 6500K or more.

Even in CW, lighting up the reds on the label would look quite nice, I imagine. :smiley:

I like it, might make for a fun pic thread.

Nice glowing brew! Founders Harvest Ale? Looks tasty.

One of my favorite drinks glows. It’s um, well, I don’t really know what it would be called on Earth. So I’ll just show you.

I may need to whip one up real quick …

… there.

Tasty, no?

Note: This image has not been edited, except to crop out some irrelevant background. It’s otherwise straight from the camera.

Clemence sells E21As in 6500K R9080. Also 2000K.

Simply because most of lights I’m interested in don’t have high CRI version or…. the other features makes high CRI LED not so important.
It’s important to me but, low/no CRI is better than no lights at all.

- Clemence