You are right. I took out the bezel and tested it again and there is indeed some tint shift at the very outer edges but fortunately they are outside of our peripheral vision, which is why I guess I never noticed it. However the tint shift is nothing as bad as Cree or Samsung LH351D emitters. You can always put a piece of DC-Fix or sand down the glass to diffuse the light.
Anyways, this is looking to be the best portable photography light on the market by far. I’ve been using the X80GTvn and KR4 E21A mule as my photography light but this looks to be miles better.
And since it’s gradual it’s less noticeable, still, personally I would put a diffuser.
By the way, with 2700+5700 (50mA) : CCT = 4012K (Duv –0.0075)
And it would be much lower with 2000+6500. So if Fireflies could offer tint mixing that would be great.
For this to work well for photography it will need some good heat sinking to maintain sustained brightness. Certainly it needs to sustain more than the LumeCube’s 650lm which is barely adequate for some use cases.
My guess is with a highly efficient 6A buck driver, and 21 emitters, this should be able to sustain over 1.5k lumens for a long time if you are holding the light (heat sinking), which should be more than adequate for indoor photography. Even my KR4 16x E21A mule is good enough for me to get enough shots for indoor space and I use it very often for work. This will should easily sustain twice the lumens.
Should try to get some 2000k because the E21A 2000K 9050 is very popular. It has the lowest blue wavelength of any LED emitter tested and it actually tests out to be 9080 despite the 9050 rating. It is the closest to candle light we’ve seen. Works well with Anduril flame mode.
It is good to see your comments (especially because SKV89 confirmed, that I didn’t buy the KR4 mule was a right decision). I didn’t have enough experience with mule lights, but it seems, this FireFlies design is already very good, just needs a few refinements.
I’d also add an at least moderately frosted front lens. Maybe if it is too much frosted, forward throw distance will be reduced more.
Don’t get me started on the LumeCube. The Air especially is ridiculously bad. It has PWM, CRI measures only 80 and the maximum output drops from 200 lumens to 160 lumens only after 20 hours of continuous use all the while the color temperature rises from 6800K to 7500K. It’s 5800K only when new out of the box. I consider it a disposable toy, not a fill light for photo/videography.
Could you offer this flashlight with Luminus Xnova Cube 1800K CRI90? This might be the best high CRI led under 2000K, and it is much cheaper than E21A.
Somebody (maybe djozz, but I may be wrong about that) tried already on BLF the following:
Nichia has also E17A emitter family, and there are phosphor converted colors mostly:
a given combination of E17A Amber and E17A red could result in a very nice ~1450K overall CCT with still adequate R9 value.
I think, that would the way to go, if lowest possible CCT is pursued.
This would mean only a partial redesign by making the emitter solder pads a bit smaller, then readjust the distance between them).