$1 Budget Beamer Beaters

I don’t own this light, and never said I do.

How about you starting with a range of LEDs you own and tell us the corresponding TCR values? Might be interesting to correlate nawj-TCRs with CRI.

Ok. That’s his opinion. I think he’s wrong. Unless he got an anomaly then he’s right. :laughing:

PS. Do ya mean this “test”? Doesn’t look like much of a test to me. :laughing:

Ya know it’s coincidentally funny ya mention this. I have a LOT of flashes. Plenty of them old-school. One of those old-schools is a completely stock Trustfire X8 with an XML-T6.

By today’s standards a supposed joke, right? Almost ancient. :laughing:

Well as I woke up this early dark morning due to one of my property sensor alarms going off. I grab the X8 and start walking the 5 acres. I keep flashes handy all over the place so first come first served.

Geez. As I’m lighting things up everywhere I noticed how perfect the TCR on this thing is. Every color and its variation is a 10. Amazing? IDK. It just is. Just like the OT 50L.

Go figure. :slight_smile:

PS. Ok ya don’t own the light. Right there ya gotta stop. Why are you involved here? Don’t twist things back to me. Ya talk like yer giving an accurate assessment of its TCR performance. How is that logically possible?

SB did a buy and test in 2020, if it was this one, then it isn’t the same as the 2021 version. This one doesn’t look the same: the marking on the tube uses a big dot or dash and the “L” is written with a hollow letter versus a solid letter in the ’21 version. The new ones don’t have the orange washer. This one also appears to have several 5mm emitters versus a single round emitter in the ’21. And the ’21 tail cap design is different, less taper and longer grooves.

2021

I did test the color rendering on the ot50l compared to several common leds.
That it is beat by the ebay leds should give you an idea.
I didnt even have to haul out a 219b sw45 to compare.
The ebay leds are used in photographic light panels.
The ot50l is designed to be cheap.
Huge sample to sample variations are the norm with cheap stuff.
Like i said its usable.

Where? I said nothing about this light, at least, I didn’t meant to. Sorry if any of my postings were confusing.

What is it good for in this context in the first place? You already named sunlight as your reference. Now you exclude users from this discussion if they don’t own this budget light. Is that reasonable? Thus far, I seem to be the only one taking you half-serious, so be kind please :smiley: .

About your experience with the XM-L: I agree that LEDs from the post angry-blue era are very convincing. I even like to take something like a CW XHP70 light with me, and it’s fully sufficient to tell blue from green from red.

But I do. And if you refuse to invest some time to investigate your own idea, why should anyone else? Do yourself a favour and let your TCR standard shine onto your hands. Then do the same under sunlight. I have never seen this this light, but I bet you’ll have to subtract some points.

@kennybobby, sorry for OT. If it’s not ok, I’ll delete my postings.

@Unheard, No problem, it’s all good. Free, Fair and Open discussions help get to the best answers and solutions.

i like to challenge and test my assumptions and beliefs about things that i think i know to make sure that i’m not fooling myself.

s. i did your sunlight test on the back of my hands. The colors look to be the same to me, but it’s hard to beat the intensity of old Sol with a 50 Lemon beater. So i tried it in the shade and in indirect sunlight from ambient reflections and scattering, so the intensity was less. Same trueness to the coloring. Direct sun is almost too intense and overwhelms the eyeballs.

Kinda some blanket statements here. You don’t know if the OT 50L has a lot of sample variations just becuz it’s cheap. You assume it’s a blanket-wide norm through experience with other cheap lights. Can’t argue with watt ya know. Ya know watt ya know and that’s that. However this isn’t another run of the mill cheap light. Butt you do say it’s ‘usable’ so we have that.

It doesn’t give me a real world idea becuz that’s not watt my eyes and others tell. It is watt it is. The OT 50L is plenty good enuff for purposes of subjective TCR. Subjective TCR is better supported only through consensus. That’s the only way subjective analysis of anything gets reasonably deserved credence. It may not be scientifically measured as perfect but neither are your references. Nothing is. For a purely hypothetical example, IF it averages over a broad sampling at 99.2% CRI device measured accurate and IF your references are 99.7% accurate this still isn’t enuff of a difference to discount it as a standard. The average human eye will not discern these differences just like measuring lumens by sight only. A calibrated measuring device will. Again those minute differences in reality has little to do with TCR reality.

I hope we don’t expect too much doing these comparisons. As the saying goes, “Expectation is the mother of all frustration.” We don’t need to get frustrated here.

Anyway, Sb, you, and Kennyrobby deserve a BIG kudos for finding it (and its earlier variations) and following through with it here for the new and improved 2021 version. I certainly appreciate it. I think many others will too. You all started it.

At $1.00, it’s a bargain. As a TCR Standard Reference, a widely available SUPER bargain. And I hope lot’s of folks invest $1.00 to see exactly watt I’m talking about.

Well ya see that’s why it has a TCR of 10. I saw (and so did others) that it had no discernable TCR flaws. I bought 6 of them. All equally consistent. I’m gonna buy prolly at least 25 more for gifts etc. I will TCR test them before I hand them out.

Butt at the end of the day nothing will replace YOU getting one and then testing it yourself and reporting back to us. Please dissect it with at least one in hand. If more agree with you than with me then I will have to reconsider it as a TCR standard. :student:

PS. Btw, there eventually may be other TCR Reference Standards added to a running list. For example, Snakebit’s 9 led E-bay flash could and probably should be included. He seems to know watt he’s talking about here so maybe I should just defacto use it as another TCR Reference Standard sight unseen. I don’t know exactly which E-bay flash he’s referring to unfortunately. He may have a problem with that though as it appears the OT 50L is barely in its league at the moment. :laughing:

Then it’s a nice find.

I’d love to, but there’s no source for it where I live.

Oh, that sux. Ya should have more than one in any case. Hmmmm. Anybody willing to make a special fly over to Germany? :laughing: :+1: :open_mouth:

I bought 4 of these OT 50l lights and a 1xD cell Eveready just to see. The OT’s all have a blue tint. The Eveready seems slightly warm in comparison to the OT’s. Nice clean hotspot on the OT’s though, while the Eveready has the crystal lattice look. Additionally, the first light I tested the batteries ran out in about 20 seconds. They all had protective film so I’m sure it was probably on the shelf for a long time before I grabbed that particular one.

Blue tint then affected TCR?

I can confirm, they used to do that all the time on “Hogan’s Heroes”.

Just blink a flashlight at the approaching plane a few times, and they’ll drop it right to ya.

No offence butt this is like comparing apples to walnuts. They both fall outta trees butt practicality-wise that’s about it. :laughing: Those 5mm’s would have to be assembled into something similar in reflector design, output, beam pattern, beam concentration, etc., to the OT 50L. Not really practical for most.

Yet if they’re in photo panels who can argue with that? I can’t. So you’re prolly right, they are likely CRI/TCR technically better than the OT 50L’s. Are they that discernably better walking around looking at a myriad of objects at night? IDK. I and others are happy with the TCR we see though. May not be good enuff for you though. I can see why. Butt that’s yer perogative.

Yet convenience of the OT 50L Walmart availability ‘outshine’s’ this hassle. As you say, it’s usable. I and others say it’s plenty usable enuff for these purposes. In this case practical too.

For $1.00 who can argue with that premise?

Ya gotta start somewhere. So I did. Hope others do too. :laughing:

I have 4 and they all have different tints.
This is expected.
And as far as this tcr thing where did that come from?
Its no industry standard i have heard of.

Yer not going to either. I invented it. TCR. True Color Rendition. In my too lengthy temporary signature. :laughing:

PS. In effect, a stretched derivative of this……………………………

PSS. Unabashedly subjective. Reasonably more supportable by consensus. Better than just relying on CRI when making a purchase if possible. Nonetheless CRI without any TCR inputs is where ya should start. Best said, TCR is most useful when combined with CRI numbers. To wit, “Trust butt verify”. :laughing:

I didn’t test it out with other lights, but here’s a quick pic with my cell phone camera on manual with WB set to 4400K. I don’t know if TCR is better than my other flashlights, but I do notice a blue tint. Left to right, sunlight, AB Nichia 219C, OT 50L:

Thanks, Scotty. Even if I view the rightmost picture isolated and let my eyes adapt to it (the blueish background then becomes almost grey after some seconds), the yellow part of the package is still green. Not so nice. Maybe it’s just the picture and it looks better by eye?