I ordered 2 different emitters in 1C tint which is my preferred tint one is an XP-L HI V3 and the other a XM-L2 U4 I checked both of them against a white printer paper before installation, both tints look basically the same, So the XP-L HI V3 1C goes into my moded Eagletac TX25C2, beam looks beautiful, the tint is what is expected, all is good! :party:
The XM-L2 U4 1C goes to my moded TN-31, tint looks good too but when comparing both lights the TN-31 looks more yellowish than the TX25C2… Hmmmm… I take out my moded FiveMega Throwmaster Mag which has an XM-L2 U2 1C tint, same tint as the other 2 and the tint looks different too!
I did notice that the glass on all 3 has a different tint coating one is blueish(TX25C2), the other is purpleish (TN-31) the other is greenish (FiveMega Throwmaster Mag).
I also noticed that my Solarforce Skyline I tends to make the tints colder than what they really were before installation
Does the window coating change the tint that much? Or is it the reflective coating or geometry of the reflector? :~
Sure anything that is not perfectly transparent will effect the resuts, but consider that the variation in tint bins is probibly much larger then the effect of different AR glass lenses.
Just to share somthing with you. My personal goal is to have the “issue” of AR lens tint change effects, be the BIG problem in my life. (not there yet)
When the Olight S10 came out, it came with an AR coating that tended to change the tint of the LED to “puke green”. So yes… tint can definitely be changed especially by the coatings on the glass.
I’m still sceptical if AR coatings can change the tint in such a noticeable way, but cheaper glass is often greenish, e.g. have a look here: Glass Lens for Flashlights (10-Pack)
Yes, try an UCL lens (or a plain glass non-AR lens). UCL lenses are suppose to be multi-layer AR which reduces or eleminates the slight tint change that single layer AR lenses can cause.
The tint change you’re seeing is a side effect from how AR works, noticable in single layer AR lenses. AR increases light transmission over plain glass but each layer of AR can only target one particular wavelength (color) at a time. For single layer AR lenses they often target a wavelength in the center of the spectrum, green. Transmission is highest at the target and gets progressively lower the farther away from the target wavelength, so the effect (in single layer AR lenses) can be a tint change. Multi-layer AR evens it out so you don’t get this tint change.
In photography the lenses are called filters, filters that can look clear adjust for color temperature. Also, in photography we use tinted reflectors and umbrellas to warm a scene. So, I would only assume that the glass and texture of the reflectors could have a fairly large affect on the tint of a light. I also think, but not entirely sure, that tint bins are approximate and can vary within the rated range. So, it would not be impossible to have 2 leds from the same bin that could be a few hundred kelvin different.
I think you might have something here, now we need to make ourselves some HCRI reflectors!
Maybe a reflector with a red tint would correct the spectrum.
I have had thoughts about trying some translucent coloring on reflectors… just have not gotten there yet. Reflectors can make a huge kelvin shift in photography.
Think about a cutaway of the LED. The phosphor layer produces the green, yellow, and red. The phosphor has a dimension of thickness.
Now to make it simple, think of a cube, which has 3 dimensions, just like the layer of phosphor. Imagine that the cube is clear so you can look through it. If you look straight through the cube with your line of sight perpendicular to the front face, the depth you are looking through is the smallest it can be; the true depth of the cube. Imagine though, that you slide to the side a little bit. Now your line of sight through the cube passes through it at an angle lower than 90° to the face, and the dimension of depth becomes more than the true depth.
Because of this phenomenon, higher proportions of green-yellow-red are produced at lower viewing angles to the phosphor. If the reflector is very shallow in ratio to its diameter, it collects light from higher angles, and the tint will be shifted to the red end of the LED spectrum. If the reflector is longer in ratio to its width, it will collect light from straighter angles, and the tint will be shifted the other direction, to the bluer end of the LED’s tint.
This is directly viewable by holding a lens in front of a reflector and watching the projection as the focus moves down the reflector. The light will become most yellow near the LED.
Reflectors changes tint too. I was testing out beam profiles of a XHP50 with some reflectors and as I change from one reflector to another (no window) the tint of the LED changed. The Convoy S2 reflector produced a warmer tint than the Maglite rebel reflector. The warmest tint (not by much) was a moderately scratched 28mm reflector from a shadow bike light.
