Does it have to boil down to just one LED flavor? or is it possible to have two versions right from the start?
What I gather from the discussion of the last few days is that a single LED flavor will almost inevitably leave a good (perhaps even large) portion of potential buyers unhappy.
With two version its much more likely to please the majority.
My suggestions for that would be these two:
XP-L HI 5000K (highest throw, highest lumens, but low CRI & high cost)
Samsung LH351D 4000K 90CRI (high CRI, no extra cost, but least throw) [if the Samsungs are unobtainable for some reason > Nichia 219C 4000K 90CRI]
I rarely use my torches in daylight, but mostly at night, or to peer into dark places.
And I prefer light levels that don’t upset my dark-adapted eyes too much, rarely at turbo levels, often at firefly or moonlight level.
Meaning my eyes are probably operating in the mesopic or even scotopic range, rather than photopic.
I wonder whether a lot of tint preference is under artificial conditions, e.g. bouncing off white walls at close range and at high levels, whereas under my sort of usage at much lower illumination levels my eyes see the tint very differently.
I much prefer the warmer tints, 4000K or below, with good CRI, for me the difference is very marked, I don’t like cool white at-all, neutral or warm works much better. My theory is that the warmer tints, more biased towards red rather than blue, compensate for the Purkinje shift towards blue sensitivity at lower illumination levels, keeping the colours more “natural” looking.
Edit: which is why it is so difficult to take realistic photos of outdoor night-time scenes, the digital camera does not respond the same way as the human eye. Perhaps someone could develop a Purkinje shift plugin for photoshop to simulate the effect with a set of curves for different wavelengths.
I realise that those who prefer to light things up “as bright as day” may have different preferences.
I don’t have any experience with the LH351D 4000K 90CRI, but I value Djozz’s opinion. If he likes it, I’m sure it would be a great choice. Perhaps it would be best to keep the light as cheap as possible, and not go with the xpl-hi, at first. I’m sure the cheaper it is in the beginning, the more successful it will be. If its a huge hit like I’m certain it will be, hopefully more flavors will be released later with different emitter choices. This formula has worked will for the Emisar line.
Seconded. 4000K. The floodier beam is a big plus for me too, when out searching for things that could be anywhere, possibly brown-coloured, or dripping red stuff.
This is the result of a relatively broken voting method called plurality voting. It does not capture more complex real-world preferences like “I prefer 5000K, but I wouldn’t be upset with 4500 or 4000, both of which I strongly prefer to 3500, but even that is better than 6500”.
There are voting systems that do capture such preferences, and TK will be using one for the poll.
here are some quick pictures of the second FW3A prototype!
Generally, I feel like the build quality is really great. I also like the beam a lot although there are now XP-G3s in use.
I’ll provide a little more feedback within the next few days since I’m in the middle of moving to another apartment.
I hope you still like the light although it differs partly from the initial design.