Convoy M21B, M21E, M21F w/ GT-FC40 4500k: 3 CRI-95 324m throwers w/ Nichia-like tint -->3 HOME RUNS. Unique & unmatched but +/- tint lottery.

Same. It’s just too much.

May I ask what settings you use on your camera for these outdoor shots?

Sure: All shots have manual white balance 5000k. Shot in RAW with Canon DSLR, processed using Capture 1.

Thanks, I’ll play around with that. Assuming ISO and Aperture on automagic?

You’re welcome. Automatic expo and then extremely-fine-adjust :slight_smile: on RAW software so that the exposure doesn’t favor one light or another. It’s a little more tricky when a light has hotspot and hence has different color rendering between spill and hotspot, like most throwy lights, and like the Convoy M21B. As opposed to for example a floody light like the Convoy S21D where the illumination is even. In difficult cases I make an executive decision on how to adjust expo :innocent: . Thankfully with Nichia most lights are floody with a smooth field of illumination so it’s not a big problem.

BTW I have found photography flawless in showing differences between LED’s or showing when two are the same, but always must be combined with real-life viewing to confirm what the eyes actually see. It’s been a very interesting experience.

When I compare brightness, then of course expo is also manual.

Yes. Especially for gray objects like bark of trees, the Nichia 219b’s magenta tint shows the most and could be a bit much. With other colors, for example green leaves and colorful flowers, it excels, IMHO.

And yes I too sometimes find that magenta too much, especially when I am out there walking and over analyzing everything I see :innocent: . That’s why I think the GT-FC40 will be a winner for many hobbyists. It distinguishes colors and shades almost as good as 219b, but has tint that leans towards warmer magenta-gold-brownish (yes I made that up lol), more natural IMHO.

I think the background of the hat picture above (the off white window blind) explains this much better than my description.

Palm tree shot with GT-FC40 in Convoy M21B, as usual white balance 5000k.

Note the beam profile - M21B is a throwy light so center is bright and peripheral is dark compared to pictures with the floody S21D Nichia’s.

For shutterbugs: I’ve mentioned it’s a little tricky to shoot a throwy light, because now you have to deal with two beam tints/colors: the hotspot vs the spill, and have to make a decision which part to adjust exposure to. The geranium flowers for this shot are at the edge of the hot spot, so upper middle part is hotspot beam, lower lateral part is the spill. In this case I made executive decision :innocent: to adjust exposure to geranium, so that I could compare the geranium between GT-FC40 and what for me is the gold standard, Nichia 219b.

Crop comparison of GT-FC40 and 219b.

As mentioned, for GT-FC40’s beam has two parts:

  1. The hotspot is shining on the upper part of the crop (the palm tree) - the light here is a pleasant warm white color. Much warmer than 6500k SST40 in my Nitecore MH12S. It reminds me of a good warm-white household light bulb in its lack of a tint one way or another. If you don’t like the magenta of Nichia or the yellow-green of SST20 4000k, you will embrace this IMHO.
  2. The spill is shining on the lower part. Overall the hot pink is spot on. Tint of leaves right lower quadrant nearly identical. Somewhat oddly, despite of the positive Duv, this LED has minimal green or yellow tint so dreaded in positive Duv LED’s. To my eyes, it is extremely close to Nichia 219b rendering and closer than any other LED in my small collection.

The crop on the right is 219b in Convoy. A very floody light so it’s an even smooth field, as opposed to GT-FC40 getting darker towards the edge.

Photography confirms my experience with real life view. The very first time I turned on M21B with GT-FC40 I thought to myself, goodness this one is a Nichia imitator. :slight_smile:

GT-FC40 4500k in Convoy M21B compared to Samsung LH351D 4000k in Sofirn SP36 BLF. The Sofirn SP36 is one of my most favorite lights, but unfortunately it does have a green tint that’s quite prominent especially in the spill.

Pics were shot in RAW, camera’s white balance is fixed at 5000k. Exposure matching is never perfect with 2 throwy lights; do you set expo to the hotspot, or the spill, and where in the spill, etc. I set this pair of crops to match exposure at the hot pink geranium as best I could.

For s non-Nichia LED with positive Duv, the GT-FC40 LED is unusual for its lack of a green or yellow tint. IMHO this is likely the reason for its Nichia-like ability to make different shades and colors more distinct - making for example red flowers “pop” against green leaves (what I observe in real life viewing).

@cannga, it probably also helps that the M21B comes with a different AR coating, taking out some green.

Thanks - let me check. My lens looks purple if I look at it from the side and green if I look through it.

Edit: BlueSwordM is referring to the “newer” Convoy AR lens that actually lowers the Duv about 20 points, vs the older Convoy lenses that do not. How to tell which lens you have: The newer Convoy AR lenses have green reflection (of ceiling light bulb for example), whereas old AR lenses have purple reflection. Mines are the new ones, and I believe (not sure) most if not all Convoy from early 2022 onwards have the new green reflection lenses.

See some discussion on this topic +*HERE and white-wall beamshot HERE

@cannga, that means you have the older coating :slight_smile:

I thought you had the newer lens.

Are there older lens vs new lens and coating with Convoy? Has this extra green been a point of discussion with Convoy coated lens in the past?

EDIT 5/26/2022:
I PM’ed Simon and was told the lenses in my 5 Convoy flashlights (all bought in 2022) are the latest generation with green tint so I take some pictures using light bulb test. This test involves looking at reflection of ceiling lights on the lens, basically using the flashlight’s lens as a mirror. In my case, I just put the flashlight on the dinner table and look at reflection of the chandelier’s light bulbs above it. The M21E lens is shown here, with a green reflection.

Out of curiosity, I also checked my AR coated eyeglasses and got the same green reflection.

I have some AR coated lenses from other brands that reflect blue and purple, but for my 2022 Convoys (M21E, M21F, M21B, S21D), all lenses reflect green.

Arrival of more toys, M21E and M21F, is imminent :innocent: . With daylight saving time and end of winter I no longer need a flashlight for my walk, so these two are purely unneeded toys lol and should be the last flashlights I buy for awhile. Unless there’s some urge about some light I totally do not need.

Both of these have on board USB-C charging and side switch, both my preference. The crucial question for me is how the beam pattern is vs M21B’s, which IMHO has a perfect beam for a daily use EDC - bright floody near field with good throw far field.

Newer convoy lenses use a coating which appears greenish when viewed from an angle. It seems to be a change that’s happening to lights as new units come into stock.

My M21B has a purpleish lens, and my L21B has a greenish lens.

Thanks. I have 5 Convoy’s 3 about 1 month old and 2 arrived yesterday from China. All the lenses behave the same way.

  1. Turn on any table lamp in your house, use the flashlight lens as mirror to look at the light bulb, it should be purple if there is AR coating.
  2. Looking through the lens at a white object in this case my white window frame, the window frame will look very very slightly green if I vary the angle a little bit. Straight through it’s more or less impossible to detect. This is much more subtle than test #1 above.

I think the above observation is consistent with the article I mentioned above. http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-166.html . The gist of it is that you would expect a properly designed single coated AR lens to let some small amount of purple reflect and some nearly invisible amount of green (said to be around 2%) to go through.

Bottom line IMHO if anyone has M21B, S21D, M21E and M21F of recent vintage it’s likely you have the proper lens that behaves the proper way, which is funny enough BAD because it lets a small amount of green to go through. (But good because AR lens increases brightness.)

BTW the last time I did optics physics is 30 plus years ago so anyone please correct me as needed. Back then I think the article would probably be comprehensible but now it sounds like Greek and at the sight of those diagrams my eyes just glazed over :innocent: .

Now I am curious what exactly the ~ 2% extra green do to the illumination. I am sure instrumentation would see it, but what about actual use? Maybe some lens vs no-lens comparison shots of the wall of truth (my living room) are in order.

Although skeptical if I could see any change, I took beam shots against the wall of truth (my living room) with AR lens versus no lens. This is NOT an instrumented test, so please take everything I note with a table size grain of salt :slight_smile: . For consistency, both my camera and the flashlights are on tripods (I use one of those camera mounts with Velco strap from Aliexpress.).

1. To my surprise, the shots with the AR lens did seem to have better brightness versus ones without the lens. Fairly obvious if I look at the shadow at the left edge of the pictures.
2. Despite of intense pixel peeping I can’t tell visually if there is any color change such as more green with the AR lens. This is something that an instrumented measurement would probably catch, but for me for all practical purposes it’s not significant.

I’m glad for this discussion that has led me to the comparison.

I take it the top photo is with and the bottom without?

Ah you gave away the answer. JK :+1: :slight_smile:

Actually a proper test would be AR lens vs non AR lens, not AR lens vs no lens. So I don’t really have an explanation for the increased brightness. Will have to run the test again some time.

What still holds true however is that the small amount of green tint that the AR lens induces is for all practical purposes not noticeable.