Just a thought, that may have been discussed before.
Why is high CRI looked upon as better than cooler k temperatures and cooler tints?
Midday is 6,000k - 6,500k or a little higher,so if you shine a torch at night with high CRI or warm tint, surely it’ll make the object look artificial with enhanced “fake” colours compared to what we see during the day?
How is that more appealing than using a 6,000k “natural” light?
High CRI doesn’t mean warm tint, you can get 6000k high CRI
Ok, but my question still remains, why choose that, over what looks more like natural daylight?
I suppose I should clarify a little. If a particular light enhances the colour of an object and makes the colours more vibrant than daylight, what’s the point? We don’t walk around with colour-enhancing glasses.
Sometimes (quite often) daylight color temperatures aren’t what we’re after for nighttime use, when we have evolved from thousands of years of fire-lit environments, and more recently from a couple hundred years of tungsten lit environments. In cases like these, color temperatures closer to 2700k to even 2000k are desired. Andrew Huberman, neuro biologist and ophthalmologist out of Stanford, has an entire episode of how our health’s delicate balance revolves around the importance of us looking at daylight (blue light) in the mornings, and warm light in the evenings.
CRI is a measurement of color accuracy to an idealized light of the same color temperature. So, if an LED is oversaturating certain colors compared to reference, then that will actually negatively impact and lower its CRI rating. An example would be deep blue (R12): most leds have too much of a blue spike, so their R12 is negatively impacted because they oversaturate blue.
I think you’re misunderstanding CRI, the sun is 100 CRI so we’re not enhancing the colours, we’re just seeing them as they would be in the daylight. Low CRI lights just make the colours look really flat and tend to not show reds very well
High CRI is real, and it's a good thing.
Some people care about high CRI, and others don't care as much.
There was once someone on BLF that really didn't like high CRI for some reason, so I made this image to make fun of the situation. 
So we haven’t evoled much at all, if we are still programmed to prefer caveman and industrial revolution lighting.
And yeah, horrid blue makes me wince. Our fridge light must be 11,000k.
Instincts be instinctin
Oh I have no doubt, I’m definitely not anti high CRI, it more the “different” look to natural daylight I personally see no advantages to. There was a light on BLF not too long ago that was around 2500K to 3000K and made night look cartoonish. The sodium lights in my area have all been changed to LED and they are great.
CCT =/= CRI
High CCT (e.g., 6000K) only looks good, even in high CRI, if the light is in abundant quantities, like noon sunlight.
If you're using a flashlight at night in a low-light environment, your eyes shift from photopic vision to mesopic/scotopic vision, and the luminosity function (perceived brightness of each wavelength) changes in low light (see Purkinje Effect). This makes any light source seem 1) cooler (bluer) and 2) greener.
To compensate for this shift in perception, a warmer CCT and magenta tint is often desired.
Yeap got that :+1:
Solid, logical answer
Its importance is overstated by gadget enthusiast forums. It’s a fairly arbitrary metric at best. At worst, it is not worth the lumens/watt cost. The accomplishments of millions of people using “outdated” low-cri lights to achieve a particular task dwarf the accomplishments of people being neurotic about tint and CRI here.
I like it though. LEDs are now efficient enough that I don’t care if I lose a smidge of light.
Also I claim — unscientifically — that I can more easily spot rattlers on a trail with warm, high-CRI light.
I agree with the metric being arbitrary--given a 100 CRI source and and the same source with a minus green filter (which brings down the CRI by definition of 100CRI), I bet most would find the more magenta, lower CRI source more visually appealing for everyday use. Though I will say that the importance of CRI/tint is completely up to preference; I just happen to be very snobbish about it, and every non-thrower light I own is 95+CRI, 80+R9; I am happy to sacrifice lumen count for better quality light for most use cases. The 519A completely revolutionized the market for R9080 emitters, I don't even sacrifice that many lumens now.
I will argue that this is true only due to low awareness of high CRI lights, and we are here to change it!
Off-topic but cool username BTW, care to explicate what it means?
I have several low CRI lights and several high CRI lights. For night time close up use, high CRI works better for me, especially if I am trying to find something. With low CRI, things seem to blend together, but with high CRI, I can spot individual items better. For example, if I drop a screw in the carpet, or worse, in the grass. I find it easier to spot the screw with a hi CRI light, regardless of if its a 4000k or 6000k light.
If you told the average through-hiker or climber that your headlamp would make things look nicer, but that they would have to carry one extra pair of batteries, the majority will pass, even after a demo. And high-CRI weapon-mounted lights in combat zones are unheard of. Slightly better color rendering is a niche demand when balanced against output/runtime any way you look at it.
Extreme squared was one of the most pointless segments from the original Jackass TV show, where Dave England attempted to skateboard while wearing rollerblades.
With all due respect, I think "one extra pair of batteries" might be somewhat exaggerated. According to Nichia 519A datasheet, the highest flux bin for the 5700K in R70 is 750 lumens, while for R9080 it's 550. So going from the lowest CRI variant to the highest CRI variant only costs you 1/4 the lumens. If you go with a slightly lower CRI emitter like LH351D, the flux loss going from 5700K 70CRI to 90CRI is less than 1/5; if you are unlucky and got a low output bin for 70CRI, the difference is 1/8!
However, if the hiker or climber is looking for detailed color or texture information (e.g., trying to distinguish hundescheiße from mud), the substantial gain in CRI comes in very handy.
I do agree with your point about weapon-mounted lights--I think they are supposed to be harsh and dazzling, which is one purpose ugly tint serves well! It's also nice to not worry about the adversary thinking, I'm gonna take you out so that I can have your posh 97CRI 90R9 -0.01duv light!, which, by the way, is exactly what would go through my mind. And thank you for explicating your username!
Reported as SPAM.