Speaking about secret menu - why are you hiding the XHP50 emitters? There are multiple reports from people who bought your flashlights with XHP50.3 when they requested it so you have the selection of them but for some reason they’re not listed anywhere on your website, there’s no XHP50.3 option for any flashlight so here’s my question - why do you dislike XHP50 so much?
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There was such option for DA1K but now it’s replaced with NTG50.
Yeah but it’s gone from everywhere and it happened before NTG50. I get that NTG50 somehow invalidated the 90-CRI XHP50.3 (altough not everyone is a fan of a rosy tint and Hank’s own samples are very rosy) but the latter also comes in R70 variant with 20% higher brightness and a very nice throw/brightness ratio with quite often decent tints.
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How does the new NTG35 4200K compare to the 519A 5700K dedomed (approximately 4200K)?
My understanding is the secret menu are options that are not stocked prebuilt and are made to order and that split being mostly driven by customer demand, not personal preference of the maker. It makes sense to me that a small operation would want to reduce their number of SKUs as much as possible by hiding the non-stocked options from general market under the assumption that enthusiasts will know to ask.
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Hi, it can always be customs requested, although the XHP50.3 HI tint is a lottery, we are not able to guarantee decent tint from different batch.
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It’s indeed a mistake, the 5000K version is 2.2% higher than the 4500K version, just corrected it, thanks for catching this mistake.
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I made that experience too. Very different tint between LEDs from the same tint bin even…
On the other hand NTG50 always has nasty rosy tint. Let’s be honest, aside from sime diehard tint snobs people don’t really like rosy tints.
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This could have been worded nicer, but agree. I prefer dead neutral or slightly rosy. Pink looks about as annoying as green to me.
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people generally like rosy tints but these new FF and NTG emitters are so rosy it’s getting ridiculous and ugly
dead neutral-slightly rosy emitters are imho the best there are not a lot of them
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I disagree completely. I’d much rather get a light with a rosy tint. It’s unique, it’s only this field of flashlights that do rosy tints. Every other aspect of illumination is either dead neutral or green. Speaking of which, if you had the choice of an emitter that was either going to be slightly rosy or slightly green. I don’t think a single enthusiast would pick the one that could be slightly green.
That’s my experience with the XHP emitters. You might get lucky and get a good one, but 50%+ of the time you’ll get some green in there. I’d rather an emitter that’s guaranteed rosy.
Just look at the SubReddit, most people are buying their lights with FFL emitters for the rosy tint. It’s almost completely replaced the 519a.
Even ask Hank yourself in 6 months. Which sells best? LH351D, SST-20, 519a or NTG35? I can guarantee it’s not the two emitters known for their green tint
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We’re not talking about slightly rosy here, we’re talking about strong pink tint. If I have to choose between a strong pink tint like FFLs and a slightly green emitter, I’m taking the slightly green…
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Ha, id say it depends on which media platform you are on, id say you are the minority
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Especially in woodland/forests, generally speaking outside etc. Soil, dirt and tree bark etc looks very unnatural under a rosy emitter since soil isn’t pink, and the rosiness washes the greens out, I’ll always choose eg. a slightly green 219C/519A over a strongly pink 351A/219B for these kind of environments.
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Any plans @Hank_Wang for a D1aa?
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When given time to adjust, people in a study (PDF) preferred extremely rosy light far outside of the ANSI white range, and thought it looked more natural than alternatives.
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I agree that it’s a personal preference but I think you’re overestinating its popularity outside of a very narrow group within flashlight enthusiasts that’s very active on BLF or reddit.
Slightly rosy or slightly green? I wish, NTG50 is extremely rosy! From ‘bob_mcbob’ thread on reddit:
From left to right: 2700K NTG50, 4200K NTG50, 5000K NTG50, 5000K FFL5009R, 4500K XHP35. FFL5009R has 98CRI and slightly negative duv. NTG is not slightly rosy, it has a very strong pink color which makes everything look like this:
Source: ‘BetOver’ on reddit (I hope this form of credits to the author is fine)
It looks nasty, completely unnatural despite high CRI rating. If I had a choice between a slightly green XHP50.3 and nasty pink NTG50, I’d get the XHP50.3 especially that it might as well be slightly below duv as well (xA and xD tints from Cree are usually pretty nice and almost guaranteed below duv). Heck if I had a choice between pink NTG50 and XHP50.3 R70 (3D, 4A, 4D, 5A) I’d take XHP in an instant.
519A was never a rosy emitter, noone who got it expected rosy tints.
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I had an order already in for a DW3AA with 519a 5700k. I emailed Hank to ask if he’d switch to the NTG35 in 5000k. He shipped accordingly.
Same order also has a KR1 with NTG50 4200k.
Friday needs to get here ASAP!!!
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I’ve never been a fan of really rosy tints. My first encounter with that was with a PL47G2 with sst20 in FA3 and FA4 bins which were pretty rosy. They make objects look very unnatural. If you’re an enthusiast who like that, awesome, but for the majority of folks, something like the 4500- 5000k 519A or FFL leds in 5000k even the xhp50.3 or 70.3 in the 4000-5000k tints are actually really nice also (ive tested a few). The E21A is probably one of the nicest leds tint wise I’ve ever seen though.
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