Help me choose...D4S emitter.

adam7027 · 2019-01-22T09:58:05.000Z

mortuus:

can anyone say something about sst20 and 3000k tint ? mine is still not arrived so im curious how it performs.

Very nice colors at mid-power. Near turbo, it bends towards purple a little bit / gets rosier, which is a bit less appealing for me, but still very good.

I like the throw of this emitter + optics combo.

Espionage_Studio · 2019-02-21T04:57:04.000Z

PBWilson:

I’d really like to see the XP-L HD beam compared to the HI.

Here you go (courtesy of DTA)

PBWilson · 2019-02-21T14:30:45.000Z

Excellent. Thanks for posting that.

koziy · 2019-02-21T23:35:40.000Z

koziy:

Is there some advantage to the Nichia 219C that makes up for it being the dimmest emitter option? The high CRI characteristic seems to now be eclipsed by the SST20 emitters.

Are some emitter options able to maintain their turbo output for longer than others before automatically stepping down? Related: Which emitter options heat up the flashlight the slowest on turbo?

I don’t know about step down tines, but one way to look at emitter options has to do with the proportion of lumens to peak candelas, which should give you an estimation of flood vs. throw. Lumens is the total amount of light coming out of the front of the flashlight, while peak candelas is the brightness value of the brightest spot, so when you compare two emitters, for example the XP-L HI vs. the XP-L HD: with the HI’s 4300lm/45,000cd, most of the light is being concentrated into the central hot spot, but with the HD’s 5100lm/27,000cd, the central hot spot is less bright because more light is being diffused into the spill surrounding the hot spot.

The XP-L HI is a nice option for this flashlight. I have D4S’s in XP-L HI 3A and XP-L HI 5D, which are really nice outdoors. As others have noted, the 5D has a pleasant orangish tint, like an incandescent lightbulb. I have often bounced the light off the ceiling on my bedside table when getting ready for bed or while looking at my phone in bed so as to get some more light in the room. The beam with XP-L HI is a little tight for use indoors, though, and I have one more D4S with XP-L HD on order, which I think will put out a much more floody beam, a little better for general use.

I have a regular D4 with SST-20 4000K emitter, which strikes me as a little bit yellowish in tint. When I compare it to my D4S with XP-L HI 5D emitter, the 5D appears a little bit rosy orange and the SST-20 4000K is just pure yellow. It’s not bad or unpleasant, but I prefer the 5D tint.

tundraotto · 2019-02-22T04:51:54.000Z

mortuus:

can anyone say something about sst20 and 3000k tint ? mine is still not arrived so im curious how it performs.

Well - SST20 3000K is so warm, it looks almost like a yellow Peugeot car headlight in a French movie….so very yellow - but it does have very high 95CRI - SST20 is pretty throwy - more so than the XPL HI.

ZED · 2019-02-22T05:45:34.000Z

Shave the dome on that yellow sst-20 3000k and it’s a beaut. Same with the 4000K. I’m really digging these emitters for their tint and color quality. They don’t get warmer with the shaved dome. It’s not hard, and I think they’re the best emitters if color quality and tint are your preference. I do really like the XP-L HI 5D tint but I think I’d take shaved dome SST-20s if I had to choose.

wstrachan · 2019-02-22T22:54:42.000Z

I love the XPL-HI in this light! Mine just flat ROCKS!

Espionage_Studio · 2019-02-27T15:02:52.000Z

I recently received the Cree XP-L HI 3A ~5000K version and LOVE this light. It is a bit chubby and short compared to what I am used to but the output and runtimes are fantastic. I tend to be a tint snob and 5k tint isn’t too bad at all but I installed the lightly frosted 286 optic to increase the flood slightly.

cetary · 2019-02-27T15:29:52.000Z

I have the 3000K 95 CRI SST-20 in a couple of custom builds. With a clear TIR it produces a crisp white halogen colored light with no color cast. Definitely not like the French selective yellow headlights at all. More like the white halogen headlights from the across the pond, UK.

tundraotto · 2019-02-27T15:40:31.000Z

XPL HD V6 - is my favourite by far. Most power and most beautiful beam, even transition from hotspot to edges, in fact my favorit beam of ANY flashlight I have ever used.

Espionage_Studio · 2019-02-27T15:51:57.000Z

tundraotto, how is the tint on that HD? It looks a bit yellowish to me in the above youtube video but I know tint can be deceiving on camera.

HONDARIDER · 2019-02-27T16:14:44.000Z

I think you should buy both. I have almost every combination possible except for the some of the XP-G2 variants. Might have a 4000K and a 5000K in that particular emitter. looks like they are not selling the G2’s anymore anyway. I like the SST-20’s because they can run a little longer on the higher settings. All of them get very hot very fast.

tundraotto · 2019-02-27T16:14:52.000Z

Espionage Studio:

tundraotto, how is the tint on that HD? It looks a bit yellowish to me in the above youtube video but I know tint can be deceiving on camera.

I don’t see any yellow tint - or any tint shift in mine.

On the SST20 - 4000K….holy tintshift…propably 2000K-3000K at the step where the FET kicks in. Great CRI yes….but dogpiss color.

cetary · 2019-02-27T16:35:55.000Z

I have no idea about the 4000K sst-20, but the 3000K varient shows little CCT shifting on varying drive currents certainly not shifting 1000K into the next nominal CCT range.

nokoff · 2019-02-27T16:44:26.000Z

Going to totally agree with these recent posts on the 3000k SST20 in the D4S. It’s not yellow, nothing like a cheap, halogen headlight. I notice the tint shift, the thing is that it’s great. It goes from brown from low to medium and fades to very neutral white at full brightness. If I ever I wanted tint shift, this is the one. You couldn’t ask for better, it keeps the torch useful for just about anything inside or out. You will still notice the brown at full, it’s not like their XPL-HI 5000k. It’s nothing like the 4000K SST-20, there seems to be mixed opinions

cetary:

I have no idea about the 4000K sst-20, but the 3000K varient shows little CCT shifting on varying drive currents certainly not shifting 1000K into the next nominal CCT range.

cetary · 2019-02-27T17:15:55.000Z

Or like a cheap 80 CRI CF-ai-L.

Junkwhale · 2019-03-04T01:38:48.000Z

Do we know what bin sst-20 emitter’s are being used? Looking at luminous’ spec sheets it seems like there’s a big variance between lowest/highest bins. The 3000/4000k are likely to differ from each other in lumens too- it looks like the highest binned 3000k is lower flux than the lowest 4000k…

cetary · 2019-03-04T02:13:16.000Z

Other people have suggested it takes several orders of magnitude more light for our eyes to see something even twice as bright. The difference in output won’t be anywhere near as different as the color of the light.

That being said, the efficiency difference between 3000K and 4000K in the outdoor municipal realm is so small that they are within the margins of error for the design software the lighting engineers use. In that application, the two color temperatures have reached efficacy parity.

Junkwhale · 2019-03-04T09:38:04.000Z

cetary:

Other people have suggested it takes several orders of magnitude more light for our eyes to see something even twice as bright. The difference in output won’t be anywhere near as different as the color of the light.

That being said, the efficiency difference between 3000K and 4000K in the outdoor municipal realm is so small that they are within the margins of error for the design software the lighting engineers use. In that application, the two color temperatures have reached efficacy parity.

Outdoor municipal realm? design software lighting engineers are using? What are you on about?

It was a legitimate question- the cree emitters have their bin listed, was wondering what the SST ones were…

cetary · 2019-03-04T23:52:09.000Z

Junkwhale:

Outdoor municipal realm? design software lighting engineers are using? What are you on about?

It was a legitimate question- the cree emitters have their bin listed, was wondering what the SST ones were…

And this is a legitimate answer from lighting engineers. I’ll see about linking the exact timestamp later, but Chris Monrad goes into detail about engineering the lighting for Tucson International Airport’s ramp and parking lot lighting. From there he explains that the 7 percent efficiency difference between the 3000K and the 4000K are so small that when applied to these high lumen and low lumen parking lot/ airport ramp use cases, the total fixture output is regarded as being the same. They probably use some form of CAD software, but you can see the optical modelling they use for the parking lot lighting.

The difference exhibited between the 4000K and 3000K is 7%, you so much as loose that difference and more in optics choices. High efficiency Carclo optics are around 90 percent efficient, but can vary on the emitter choice and optical pattern chosen, wide spot or narrow flood and so on, and can have optical efficiencies in the 80 percent range. Add in an anti-reflective coated lens that has nearly the same optical gains against a glass/plastic lens as the efficiency difference between 3000K and 4000K, and the difference in efficiency is not so great. In other words, you so much as loose or gain more in optics choices then an output bin.

Users on r/Flashlight have made the observation that it takes a four fold increase in brightness for us to subjectively see a light only twice as bright. From my anecdotal experiments, I’m a little inclined to agree. Maybe not focus too much on an output bin differential?

Edit:Found it, see the above video at 49:10 for information regarding the closing of the gap of efficiency between warm white 3000K and the cooler emitters.