I’ll repeat myself: unless National Geographic Magazine contracts with me to go down to the Amazon basin to catalog Poison Dart Frogs, or I get into nighttime portrait painting, I couldn’t care less about high CRI, or even beam patterns.
I need to see in the dark, is all.
I’m a gun guy, but not a ‘great white wall hunter.’
Some people think high-CRI is only useful for white wall hunting. Not going to change those people.
I personally notice the difference a lot in daily use. My EDC lights all have high-CRI emitters. The lights that don’t have them aren’t really EDC lights anyways.
I’m not a gun guy but I’m also not shining at the wall. I’m using my flashlight in the forest so there’s a lot of green and brown (sometimes some yellow). Color temperature affects green (higher CCT=more blue=green gets pale and blueish), CRI affects browns and yellows (higher CRI=higher R9/red=juicier browns).
You sure you’re not making a strawman and it’s not actually just people preferences ? just like you prefer cold CCTs, low CRI for better efficiency.
In your case you have much, much more choice since flashlights are predominantly cold white and low CRI, so it’s all good right ? I guess I don’t understand what is the point of this thread, especially since this is a recurrent topic.
Exactly. There is no correct and same answer for all people. Just like a whole lot of other things in life, the answer depends upon many variables.
I have made the journey from “I must have the absolute most number of lumens possible and the color/CRO does not matter” to where I do look at the CRI and what the intended use is. I have a few very bright, low CRI lights that fulfill certain uses. Most of the lights I use frequently have high to very high CRI and I can see the difference. Seeing, or appreciating that difference, took some time to develop to where I gave it some serious thought.
“Different strokes for different folks” as we used to quip back in the 60’s. :laughing:
Walking in the forest was where I first really noticed how much better I liked the illumination qualities of my then-new high CRI light compared to the max lumens lights I had been using.
I used to be all about efficiency. But then I had a hike where a poor CRI made it hard for me to distinguish the details of the trail under my feet. This was slightly dangerous and made me much slower. And required my full attention to tread carefully.
Since then, I think that flashlights shall have high enough colour rendition. But so far I failed to determine what exactly is high enough.
Also, world in high CRI and below BBL just looks better. I like to live in a good looking world.
if you just want to know if the pan is boiling over, a green light would suffice, and would use less battery power
since I use rechargeable batteries, runtime is not a priority for me. My priority is Spectrum Quality. I use my flashlights to illuminate things with Red in them.
Also, choosing a low CRI light over a high CRI light for walking around the woods at night is kind of like choosing to eat spaghetti with just a spoon. You may not realize it, but you’re just making more work for your eyes.
I dealt with Pantone color printing using high-end CYMK printing devices in my career.
People often didn't calibrate their (RGB) monitors; it's time consuming and the equipment is somewhat expensive. Then they whined about "the print doesn't match my monitor". Well... duh! This, under low CRI, cool white fluorescent lighting no less. Walk them outside into daylight & see how the colors on the same print change; the look on their faces was priceless.
I find low CRI/cool white acceptable for long distance throwers. I prefer warm-ish high CRI on my floody lights for closer use and will happily pay extra for it.