Neutral XM-L

Got my shipment of 2 XM-L LED's today from the CPF group buy. The ones I ordered were T4 brightness and 5A3 tint. There is a little exaggeration in the pictures below due to white balancing, but not all that much. I might try some outdoor shots later. The 5A3 is being driven with the 2.8A driver from KD set to 3 modes and the comparison is the 3-mode Ultrafire XM-L T6 from Manafont. I'm happy with the Manafont tint, but the neutral really makes it look cold.

First at 1/25th second. It's a lot of light, so at this exposure, you can't tell much:

Next at 1/200th second:

Now at 1/1600th second. I'm surprised how well the T4 holds up against the T6 in overall brightness, plus the Manafont should be driving the LED harder than 2.8A KD driver. The Manafont is using a smooth reflector but the neutral is using an OP:

..But that T4 seems to have a pinkish tint in the corona.

I look forward to seeing some outdoor shots.

The camera is over-correcting a little bit. I don't see any pink in real life. Maybe just a little green in the corona and the spill is a little brown.

Outdoors needs some mowing right now, so it will probably be this weekend when I get those shots.

Tints are never viewed well on a computer screen with auto adjusting cameras. there is soo much variation in the display colour profiles (for the screen), both software and hardware, and in the cameras colour profiles and white balance adjustments.

Either way, neutral tints need to be experienced before you can really comment on wanting "vanilla white tints". The adjustment of the eyes to colour tints mean that given enough time, both cool white and neutral white tints alone will appear "white", the difference is in the colour rendition is better with warm/neutral tinted LEDs.

Outdoor shots would be nice. I havent fired up my XM-L neutrals from cutter yet (not sure what tint, they only said it was a 5 bin tint...............) but If i eventually mod one of my torches to XM-L ill try to put up some pics if i get the chance.

(btw i dont have XM-L torches yet, either have to mod (playing with reflector heights) or make)

Looking good! Anxiously awaiting my share...8)

Can you make another shot without automatic white balance? Closest to real life, please. Because I like white tints (whitest possible), and I thought I need to buy neutrals, but seeing this... I think I will to switch to cool ones :| Too "orange" IMO. Thanks in advance, brted ;)

Wish I had jumped on these. Only attempted a couple of minor modes so far (neutralized a D10), but I would love to find an empty P60, a well regulated driver, and one of these emitters. I'm guessing it probably makes more sense to neutralize a P60 already made for XML since most of the empty P60's appear to be for XRE.

Sorry, post is a little off topic, but seems to be the easiest way to utilize one of these easy on the eyes XML's.

There is a manual white balance, but you have to set it by taking a picture of something white, so I've never been able to make that work correctly. I'll take another try at it and see what happens.

Some people like cool tints better, but I think cool tints do make everything look the same and kind of flat whereas a neutral makes things look a little more natural.

The drop-in I bought was for a XR-E, but I think it works out fine. It could give a somewhat tighter hotspot than it does. If the hole gets too small you risk damaging the dome, so I'm happy not to have to worry about that. I took some more pictures of the drop-in to do a step-by-step of making a P60. Hopefully I can put that together this weekend.

I'm not sure I understand your concern. A P60 host is made for...any P60 dropin. You can put an XR-E in it, an XM-L, heck, a lot of them still have old Luxeon LED's in them. The only thing you have to optimize is the reflector, which you can buy separately for a couple bucks.

If DX or MF would come out with a smooth reflector optimized for XM-L emitters, I would be all over that. I think the problem is the size of the XM-L, it lends itself more to a floody light than a focused beam. But someone will come up with one soon. If Fenix can figure it out for the TK41, someone will make it work in a P60-sized reflector.

Neutral tints look pink/orange against a cool tint, but its all relative. After using neutral tints, the cool whites look sickly blue.

I thought the hole in the older reflector would be too small for a XML. I haven't taken a P60 apart.....yet.

Some work, some you have to enlarge the hole.

There is evidence appearing that blue light (As in all those "daylight" tubes) can be bad for vision, health and mental health.

Except when it isn't (See SAD)

The story is too complicated just now, but from personal experience, very blue-white LEDs mean that I lose all depth perception - the world is no longer 3D but a set of cardboard cutouts behind one another.

I cannot judge distance at all under cool white LED light. I can under incandescent light.

Indoors this is irrelevant - but at a distance this is important.

Obviously it's just in comparison to the MF light and presumably exagerated by your camera, but it does look like you've managed to get an LED that gives off brown light :P