It looks like zebralight just posted the SC51w and H51w up for preorder. I know they're not really budget lights, but dang they sure look nice. I currently have the regular H51 and SC60 and I'm wondering if the tint change is worth it... I'd hate to order one (or both) and wind up thinking "Meh...".
Not sure where to post this here looks good..
I popped home for lunch and there waiting is a package :D
It's the Zebralight H51w
I already own the H51 (cool white version) it is one of my most used light out of my collection, often used in moonlight mode. I see much love there is for neutral lights by quite a large number of people and decided to see what the fuss was about, so I decided the H51w will be my first neutral.
H51w and H51
Build quality as always is top notch from zebralight, seriously, if you don't already own a Zebralight, you are missing out. Just with my H51 the machining on the H51w is superb and the emitter is perfectly centred. Zebralight have a UI which is a cut above the rest in this price bracket - instant access to moonlight and full power and well spaced modes.
Baring in mind this is my first neutral light: I switched it on for the first time, my first thoughts were something along the lines of "Hmm.. well that's different!". Quite yellow and, well.. warmer (derrr!). I wasn't sure what to make of it. The tint didn't really look like what I had in mind for a neutral emitter.
I took it down to my basement along with my H51 side by side and placed them both on high mode.
Something that stood out to me straight away to my eyes: Cool lights do look creepy. No doubt about it, at least to me they do. I agree with a train of thought out there that cool lights can create this surreal/end of the world/cold/bad vibe of a feeling, the camera can't capture it, but I feel the creepy-ness is present. It's not until I had a warmer light in my hands that I saw this. The subject of tint is a personal thing though, and I will come back to my thoughts on tint a bit later.
Allowing my eyes to adjust to this new wavelength, I walked around with the H51w for 5 minutes down in the basement, I found the light produced from the H51w to be very pleasing and easy on the eye by a massive amount. These thoughts were reinforced every time I flicked from the H51w to the H51 to compare them.
Basement:
H51
H51w
The camera captures the light from the H51w in a different light here, it isn't as red as the photo suggests EDIT: Forgot all about re-calibrating my monitor after reinstalling windows last month! The camera captures the tint correctly!
Daylight white balance used.
Out in the garden now:
H51
H51w
H51
H51w
It is noticeable that the light output from the H51w is less than the H51 to the eye. I am looking at it tonight and feel like I want more light output from it, having said that I am saying the same about the H51! Purely because I think I am being greedy and am forgetting that these are headlamps. I have been spoilt with a Cree XM-L being driven at 3amps in my other light.
There is a lack of punch (brightness wise) with the H51w but that lack of punch is forgotten about when you look at the beam tint, there is a punch in colours. It is very very nice indeed. The H51w seems to have a nicer spread of beam compared to my H51 which has a smaller hotspot and a more harsh spot to spill nature of the beam, odd.
I really like the neutral tint. Some say once you go neutral you will not be interested in cool tints any more. It is early days and I have no intention of ditching my cool lights.. I find the sheer lumen output of cool lights appealing and fun they have *POW* factor! But for long term use I think neutrals are very appealing. I have only owned the light since yesterday so will see how I settle in with it. I used it last night as night light, the neutral tint makes is perfect for this for this purpose and I would reach for it over my other lights every time.
I think the next step would be to go for a 18650 based P60 neutral drop-in which drives the emitter hard. With neutral XM-L emitters due out very soon, I think I will wait.
Trancersteve, that was an excellent overview...wow!
Ya, the neutrals are nice... Since posting that I've gotten a few (not ZL though).
Good job on the beamshots...and thanks again.
I have an H50 and resisted getting any other headlamp as I felt I didn't need any more. Then I got an Ultrafire UH-H3d which is longer-running and brighter if I want it to be.
But I've been looking at the Zebralight for a while now. Seems a very desirable light, just not this month.
Thanks for the review. But my wallet hates you ;)
Great beamshots! They're really showing the advantages of neutral tints. And it's nice to see more people trying the neutral/warm tints and liking them. That's my only problem with budget lights, they are hard to find in more neutral tints.
Glad to see you liked the new light, but I have to disagree. The next logical step would be an high power incandescent. ;)
Do you know how many British English speakers would get that sentence correct?
A hint. Very nearly none.
By the way, you did get it absolutely right.
For a prize tell me which letter would be omitted in British usage.
There's a new 18650 in it for the first person who to tells me why in a PM as long as English is not your first language.
I suspect that most people for whom English is their first language would feel that what you wrote feels wrong. Despite the fact that what you wrote is absolutely correct.
Thanks guy for the nice comments.
Match, do you find yourself using your neutrals more than your cool lights?
That Ultrafire UH-H3d looks very nice indeed Don, looks like a cheaper verison of Zebralight's all flood H501 but with the added features of ramping brightness and increased runtime. I know what you mean about the wallet being hit, at least you live out in the sticks and get to use your lights. I live in a built up area and often wonder why I have 11 lights and want more ... a strange addiction/hobby this is. I still say thank you Don for helping me out with those 3xAA battery holders and magnets for my camping trip on CPF back in the summer of last year .
I echo what you say Volk, there simply isn't enough neutral budget lights out there. It frustrates me. Infact, even the higher end is a struggle. Take 4sevens.. I would love to buy a Quark 2xAA neutral (the runtime for moonlight mode fascinates me!) but they have these ridiculous 'limited runs' of their neutral and warm lights, very annoying really.
I am not sure if I would ever switch to incandescent again, it is a bit of a different beast. What I love about LED light is how efficient they are. But the pure power of incandescent can be quite interesting!
I live in a city. And own 140 or so lights - maybe more. But I can get out of the city in 20 minutes on a good day or two hours on a bad day.
But I don't have one of those "wife" things. Just a very large and elderly assistant who is a dog. Literally.
This updated thread dovetails perfectly into my Zebralight Tint Rant thread I started last night:
http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/1693#comment-26566
No offense meant to any individual at all involved in my rant or this thread, just appreciation.
Question--doesn't that "w" tint seem kinda orangey? It brings back bad memories of my 4Sevens Quark Mini 'special' edition "Warm". Although yours is not as bad. There is still... a quality to it, which I don't find (at all) in incandescent lamps. A distracting tinge of orange. Like an LED doing a bad impersonation of an incandescent. And we haven't even gotten to the ambiguity of Zebralight using the "w" (warm) suffix, then writing out "neutral" next to the very designation, apparently oblivious to the contradiction (a light cannot objectively be both neutral and warm at the same time).
And I don't care what anyone says, that is not neutral. Or, at least not appearing quite neutral in your seemingly very well and deliberately color-balanced photos. Neutral, by definition, has no bias toward any color, especially when eyes are adjusted to midday sunlight (but I think any real bias will be seen by the eye, even in other environments). So, if a light has an orange tint to it, or a yellow or green or blue, or "puke" (apparently a new tint designation for "neutral" from 4Sevens), it's not neutral. I suppose I'll leave that as a teaser for the other thread so as not be able to accuse myself of cross-posting. Thanks for the very nice pics and writeup. (And I still am meaning the "doesn't it seem kinda orangey?" question for this thread.)
I linked Scotland and your nice 'out in the sticks' looking beamshots to that you must live our in the scottish hills/forests!
Nice dog .. I have an old black lab
Done that, washed the carpets. Fizzy usually needs out around 4am.
Once upon a time I could sleep through her need to get out.
Not now.
Monitor calibration.
It looked too orange/red on my monitor also, until I remembered that I haven't calibrated my monitor! I reinstalled Win7 on my PC a month or so ago and totally forgot about using my X-Rite One Eye monitor calibrator.
Unless you have calibrated your monitor with a calibration device you will not see a true representation of colour.
I hate it when American announcers try to sound so smarty when they say, "An historic achievement", and aspirate the H. Ugh. Reveals their ignorance, instead of concealing it. Freakin' ivy league know-it-all elites. Just say "a historic achievement" unless you really know what a mute H is, and have a damn-good reason to use it this side of the pond! I remember watching Tom Brokaw do that endlessly as a teenager on dad's nightly news.
The biggest irony is that the letter "H" itself is typically pronounced... with a mute H! OMG. "Aeche" instead of "Hayche". Heck (not eck), the consonant should be named "Hay" not "Ayche". (I think it is in Hebrew?) This had never even occurred to me until I heard an Arab say the English alphabet to me, pronouncing the letter H as I would forevermore consider proper.
Hope I didn't spoil any Consonant Olympics where the gold metal is an 18650 delivered by Royal Mail.... seems like there should've been enough time. And although I'm a native English-speaker, I hope that at least tickled your anglophile fancy ;) . As you can see, I have a strong-willed streak of 'skilled independence' when it comes to language, and communication in general. Too much mechanics and it gets in the way of actual communication, which defeats the true purpose of convention.
Wearing my computer fixing hat.
One does not calibrate monitors, one calibrates workflows. I charge $3500 per machine. And that is the cheap bit. Calibrating printing presses costs a lot.
The ideal is that what comes in the door is what comes off the press. I have yet to accomplish that. Printers get paid to sort this. And usually do it very well.
I have caused a strike by refusing to allow printers to sort the mess out. I was (incidentally) trying to make their skills obsolete and they didn't like it.
Don: I haven't been using english in writing for a long long time so most of the time I'm rolling a dice when it comes to the "a and an" (which I guess you're were referring to). And to be honest I just read up on how to use "a and an" and still don't have a clue how to use them. So I forfeit the competition and leave it for someone else to explain.
Trancersteve: I hear you about the "limited runs". I think that sort of move in some way steers the market in the direction of cool whites ("bah, NW is just for those nitpicky fools who doesn't understand that cool whites gives more lumens which ALWAYS is to prefer") and I honestly think that most people would prefer NW if they just had the opportunity to try. It's a shame really, but one day when we have enough lumens (like we ever going to :) ) I hope more people start buying NW.
And yeah, incandescents most times are more toys then truly useful.
EDIT: WOW! Am I a slow writer or what? :)
Dang, man. $149.
X-Rite Eye-One Display LT, Accurate Monitor Calibration
http://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-Display-LT-Calibration-Conscious/dp/B000NRODT4
Looks like everyone involved in the "tint wars" needs one of these.
Is there a cheaper way to do it? Like, without hardware and with free software?
And so, you're saying there is definitely no orangey tint to it? Yet, there is a yellow tint? How close is it to an incandescent? (Perhaps even a comparison beamshot, as long as you've gone this far? Don't want to get greedy... but I think there is a dearth of info.)
Not only did you get it absolutely correct, you knew how most native English speakers would get it wrong. Many of the people I went to school with (And the only language any of us could read was English.) would not even understand what the question meant.
PM me your address and there is an 18650 on its way to you.
I could ask this question of any thousand people who were born in an English-speaking country and they would get it wrong.
Most Swedes speak better English than I do.
I do try to persuade people to get it right. Most people don't so I do try to encourage those who do.
No wonder you can afford so many lights!
As you know, a software based ICC monitor profile is generated from the readings of the hardware calibrator.
The term work flow I normally only introduce when printing, here we are just wanting to see as close as possible (on screen) a true representation of colour. Colour spaces can be a nightmare and this can add more depth to the problem. But on the whole (at home) one can achieve very good results from a device which costs in the region of £100.
I have had much success with work flow from my Canon DSLR, X-Site One Eye and a Canon Pixma inkjet, I am able to produce printed results that match the on screen image.
My favorite despite the ultracrap body with a warm $ 1.5 emitter , amazing at 700 ma...
http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/1659
Many thanks Don
It's really nice of you to stand by your word but I can't accept a battery by just being lucky with the keyboard. :)
Better save it for the upcoming raffle... (see what I did there? )