My name is Dustin. I'm by no means a professional who relies on quality lights but I'm ready to find some lights with much better quality than what I currently have.
I stumbled across is forum searching for very high CRI LED lights. I'm all for light quality, quantity is good but I'm looking for high quality lights in several categories.
1. Home light bulbs. I'd hate to admit this but for a long time I've been using the GE reveal light bulbs, and one day I stopped and thought about why I'm always buying them...over time GE made the bulbs lower quality and cheaper designs and the lifespan of the bulbs was terrible. I'm talking less than 18 months and a higher than 50% failure rate. Upon researching, I don't seem to see any bulbs that suit my needs in the major stores so I'm looking for some bulbs that have high or very high CRI. I know that efficiency will be sacrificed but I would much rather have accurate color representation and nice color temp than to save a few pennies in electricity.
2. I'm also looking for some very high CRI strips(flex or rigid will both work) because I'm going to start growing plants indoors and I want to run an experiment with a typical grow light setup vs a full spectrum bulb supplemented by some separate far red and uv strips or modules. I lack a lot of the knowledge for spec-ing out exactly what I want and I don't know everything that's needed such as drivers/heat sinks/power supply/etc, but I'm willing to learn. In terms of strip lights I'm also looking for home light design inspiration and in the near future something for good DIY under cabinet lights.
3. Flashlights and head lamps! I'm always disappointed with my flashlights, most I've got are cheapos from Amazon and home improvement stores. A coworker a while back showed off his Emisar and I admit I was jealous!
I'd like to say that I haven't built any custom lights or anything before, but over time it feels more and more like that's my beat options in some scenarios, so I've got some learning to do!
It is not easy to accurately reply to "recommend me a light" topics, because of the huge width of the cost spectrum and size and performance and quality and purpose spectra, too.
I categorize lights by size, and by cost, and by performance and by beam profile. In my attempt to collect all possible combinations and permutations, I am up to 50 real performance lights of all sizes and cost ranges.
You mentioned Emisar, so I will mention that my current favorite edc is the Emisar D4V2vn quad W2 emitter. There is a choice of emitters, so you can select CRI, tint, etc as you like.
This forum is a vast treasure trove for the beginner, middling and advanced flashlight enthusiast. :)
Just about impossible for someone to recommend a light for you, unless you want a generic light. Better off reading the 10,000+ articles and deciding for yourself. This is a highly subjective question. Personally, I would not want anyone deciding for me.
Thanks! Is the majority of the forum traffic flashlight discussions? I did find this place while searching for high cri strips, just wondering what the forum is mostly devoted to.
Sorry if I miscommunicated, I wasn't looking for anyone to tell me which exact light to buy or anything. Haha I didn't even give any really specific criteria such as price/size/performance/etc. Was mainly looking for recommendations for threads on here mostly for the high cri home lighting and strips and maybe flashlights since that seems to be the most popular topic on the forum.
What I've learned about tech stuff is that it gets outdated/superceded very fast. Even though there are 10000+ threads of info on this site I'm sure 90% or more is now outdated info...lot of times products that make sense one day will get superceded with better/cheaper products and it no longer makes sense to buy a trendy product from 5 years ago
Hmm, I was replying to y'alls specific posts but it's not showing it that way. The best way to reply to someone on this forum is to quote them I guess?
I would like to recommend you Sofirn SP40, D25L, SC21
Good quality with affordable price!
Sofirn SP40 is a headlamp adopted LH351D 5000K 90 high CRI LED. It is rated at a maximum output of 1200 Lumen. This headlamp also can be used as flashlight.CLICK TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SOFIRN SP40
Sofirn D25L is a headlamp with a LH351D 5000K 90 CRI LED rated at a maximum output of 1000 Lumen. LED boasts an extended 50000-hour lifespan. It lasts 6 hours bright beam on medium 1 mode. CLICK TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SOFIRN D25L
Sofirn SC21 is small in size but powerful. 90 High CRI LED provides a balanced beam with some throw and flood. It is designed with a two-way clip, it can be attached to your cap as a headlamp. Also there is a magnet in flashlight tail enabling you to attach this LED flashlight to any metal surface. CLICK TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SOFIRN SC21
BTW, you can check our Amazon store to know more and find one that you like. CLICK TO CHECK
Hi DustinH and Welcome to BLF.
.
For building your grow light, look for that info on YouTube. My first grow lights were T5 fluorescent and they did not burn plants but did not have good light depth penitration. Next grow lights will be led with a full array from 3000K to 6500K and UV too with at least 20,000 Lumen adjustable to 4000 Lumen over an area of a 4 x 4 ft tent for indoor growing.
Thanks, I'll be sure to check out those headlamps.
Thanks, I am a fan of the Resident Evil movies so I'm also a fan of Mila Jovovich. Never played the games but the movies are really good!
I checked out some of your build with water cooling - I can respect the work that goes into making your own parts! I took a very intensive class at a makerspace and learned to make basic CNC parts on a HAAS VF2, everything after model creation to part in hand. It was very involved and fun, but unfortunately after making my test part(a domino) and passing the class, life got busy and I never made any parts of my own.
I have this idea to try and get a grow light to match the spectrum of natural sunlight as close as possible but the experienced people I've spoken to about using very high CRI lights all say it's not going to make a difference and be a silly project. What's funny is they also say "an indoor grow won't match the strength and speed of outdoor plants, and also admit that more modern LEDs are much better than the blurple lights ever were. I'm not sure why most people think that making an even better light spectrum isn't going to be beneficial.
Is there a formula to help convert the lumens you quoted to PAR or PPFD? Everything I've read is that plants don't really care about lumens and that's a measurement tailored to human eyes and plants have a broader spectrum that contributes to photosynthesis and other plant processes. I believe even the traditional PAR spectrum (400-700nm) is more narrow than what the plants actually use and a lot of research is being conducted but it seems that the spectrum should be widened to at least 380-760nm.
All - is there a good guide on understanding the basics of LEDs and the required components that make lights?
This is probably tantamount to blasphemy in the gaming community, but I prefer the Resident Evil movies to RE2 remake. You spend so much time finding keys (often disguised as something else, like an axe) to progress to the next area where you begin the process of searching for a “key” again. Sometimes you needs keys to access keys! :person_facepalming: To each their own, but to me that feels like busy-work. Then there was the zombies tanking multiple headshots—not immersive! I honestly couldn’t make myself finish that RE2 remake.
The RE movies may not be high art, but they are effective popcorn movies. And watching them doesn’t feel like work. The RE2 remake felt like work to me.
I have a Waveform 3000k 95CRI 60 watt photo grade, that has excellent tint…
wait a minute… I have a novel idea! I could buy a dimmer for the nice photo grade light… hmmm going shoooping
