$1 Budget Beamer Beaters

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?

There’s a pretty extreme disparity here. Just on the concrete colors between the Nichia and the OT 50L. :open_mouth: I’m not buying it. I think it’s maybe yer phone’s camera not rendering watt is there accurately vs sunlight. Or the flashlights are being held too closely to the object basically overriding TCR. Looking at the upper left corner glare in the Nichia for example.

Then there’s the different surfaces. The sunlit box is on something different than the Nichia and the OT 50L. Then the sunlit box almost appears to be on polished stone/concrete if not mistaken.

That’s an interesting color test.

The blue in the upper right corner of all 3 appear more similar than the blue in the lower left corners with variations across the span.

Yeah. Great observation. I think there may be an ‘imbalance’ going on here.

I apologize, as I’m not familiar with the proper setup for beamshots. I thought I’d just do a quick pic to demonstrate that there is a noticeable difference. You all are right about the closeness, I was about 4 feet away at an angle of about 45 degrees, and the OT has a tight hot spot so I was using the spill, and the AB has a very wide hot spot which is probably adding to the issues. However, the difference is similar to what I observe in person between the two flashlights… with the box and the OT, the yellow is greener, the orange is more washed out, and the redish/muave looks more like a purplish/mauve just like in the photo.

For the record, the tint is similar to the first OT I tried with the almost dead batteries. I fried that one seeing if it would work with an 18650 so the pics are from the second of the four I purchased. I think it might have been a short due to the long spring under greater compression with the 18650 (and maybe the outer metal ring on the circuit board). Noob move, I know.

The sunlight was in my driveway, and the flashlight pics were in the garage. The color difference of the cement in the garage is similar to what I see with the naked eye between the two flashlights. For me, the yellow’s greenish tint with the OT is apparent by eye, too.

Although I won’t take a pic, sometimes I compare beam profiles and colors in my bedroom where I have a dark blue, red, and white can of LocTite foam sitting on a dresser. The bluer tinted LED flashlights often turn the dark blue to royal blue and the red tones become less vibrant. I tested all four lights for function and they all had a similar tint.

Edit: AB set to Low (50 lumen).

The sunlight is parallel, hence no variation across the box.

Ok lemme get this straight. Is the TCR of the garage concrete in the Nichia shot, brown or grey?