FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Have you seen a reddit user's 319-day ZL moonlight runtime? That is a bit lower output, though.

Not sure I’d go that far.

I have a 95 CRI SST-20 Emisar D4, plus a bunch of loose 95 CRI SST-20 from International Outdoors.

They look great … at full power. But at intermediate and low power settings I get “pea soup” green. Looks WAY worse than much lower CRI XPL HI.

… no I didn’t.

I said the images were photoshopped, because they were. I added a logo on the button. About 20 minutes later, djozz said he almost thought they were real, and it occurred to me that people might think the colors were ’shopped too, not just the button. So I posted again to clarify things.

I don’t know if the button logo will happen, or what it’ll end up looking like. But the colors are already prototyped and at least some of them will probably be produced.

FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public - #11628 by ToyKeeper hth :beer:

Edit: Sorry TK…… I see you got this

Ah, OK — got you now. I’d thought everything was photo edited. Thanks for the correction. Would’ve been easier if those who posted earlier had let me know the specifics earlier, but… anyway, deleted. :beer:

I’m liking that dark bronze color. :+1:

That’s true: the ratio isn’t a big deal when the absolute difference is small. That said, I’ve used a number of lights with nice tint and low (70ish) CRI, like the Klarus G30 with a 5000K MT-G2, the FW3A in 7A, and an Oveready BOSS with 4000K XP-L HIs (unknown bin, but rosy looking on a white wall). I notice when I use them outdoors. To me, it’s not subtle. I notice as soon as I illuminate most anything natural.

I haven’t done any objective tests of object identification/differentiation, but I do think it makes a significant difference. That’s not to say nothing else matters - something with horrible tint, or a rainbow would look like crap and hinder object identification even if it technically had high CRI. I have 219Bs in my FW3A for a reason.

blue one for me

Thank you.

I was curious so I went out for a bit of a tint safari with a XP-L HI 3D and Nichia 219B. I found that virtually everything outdoors looked pretty much identical under both beams, but indoors I spotted three things where the colors were visibly different — a painted white wall, stained wood, and some magenta bed sheets.

These were the worst cases I could find. They seem to hit exactly on the shades where the Cree emitter falls short. Most things, though, had little to no difference.

Left: 219B, Right: XP-L HI 3D

Left: 219B, Right: XP-L HI 3D

If I switch from a FW3A to another XP-L HI light, the differences are smaller. I think the bin used in the FW3A may have been the one with the worst tint and most lumens, while some other lights may have prioritized tint more.

Regardless, even this relatively bad XP-L HI still looks better than the SST-20 lights I’ve tried so far. Here’s the same thing, but the light on the right is SST-20 95CRI this time:

Despite appearances, the stained wood is not, in fact, green. That’s just the high duv distorting the colors. And it’s why I tend to prioritize duv over CRI. The green beam on the right has the highest CRI of anything shown here, but it also has the worst tint.

Note: I don’t know how the FW3A SST-20 will look. I don’t have one yet. This pic is a different SST-20 light.

Note 2: No, there probably won’t be a 219B FW3A, because the 219B has been mostly out of production for years. It would be cool though.

Wow that SST green is fugly!
Seriously, it’s tough to be a 219B - my all time fav for CRI

Some people notice some don’t . I am totally with Zak on this one.

Outdoors, especially when you try to distinguish colours and to estimate depth, the hi cri really shows.
It’s why I always take a hi cri with me when I go running after sunset.

I want to buy one. This sounds great! Thanks

TK, what CRI or color temp is the SST20?

That pic is showing ~4500K next to ~4000K.

According to RobertB, a weak Lee minus eight correction filter helps reduce the green on the 3D. His beam shots earlier on look terrific. Have you tried using any correction filters?

That SST-20 is :confounded:

Please do not value tint pics so much, they are always off and there is always someone who bases opinions and even buying decisions on tint pictures, which is silly. No SST-20 4000K 95 CRI I have ever seen in reality looks remotely so green.
(and this is not because I prioritise CRI over tint :stuck_out_tongue: )

Should I believe you or my lying eyes?

Following the CRI discussions here, I also ran a few tests of my own. I pitted two Convoy S2+ flashlights against each other, the only difference being the emitters used (XP-L HI 4000K vs SST-20 4000K).

On a white wall, the tint of the XP-L HI was far pinker than the green SST-20. This isn’t so much a real-world concern however, so I decided to ignore the differences in tint and focus on the CRI aspects of each emitter.

I took the flashlights outdoors last night and let them rip across a field. Both emitters have a very similar amout of throw in the S2+, I’d say around 250m, so it is a pretty fair comparison. With all the grenery, tint wasn’t much of a concern any more, so I focused on trying to make out details in the treeline at roughly 100m and 200m distances. I supposedly have perfect eyesight, but I’m sad to say that I couldn’t see a bit of difference between the two, except for maybe the greener SST-20 looking a negligible shade cooler than the pinker XP-L HI. When I walked right up to the trees, the SST-20 did make the tree trunks look a little bit more saturated in colour, but honestly the difference was pretty minor. The XP-L HI’s 70 CRI was still more than enough to easily distinguish colours. No issues spotting where the branches ended and the leaves began. Nothing looked particularly washed out in comparison to the higher CRI emitter. A bright red car that I passed on the way back was probably the biggest difference I spotted. It looked fine under the XP-L HI, but popped a little more under the SST-20’s high CRI light.

It’s odd why some people’s eyes are really sensitive to CRI, and others’ aren’t so much. Don’t get me wrong, if all SST-20s had the same great tints as most XP-L HI emitters then I’d pick them as a favourite, but I just don’t feel that the efficiency, heat and tint tradeoffs are worth it for a difference I barely percieve in real world usage.

It’ll be interesting to hear the results if someone more CRI sensitive than I were to perform a similar test. :slight_smile:

/\ … Where did the picture come from??