Apart from tint differences that you can prefer or not, what the 90+ CRI emitters that i have seen sofar all have in common is that they show blue as real blue and not purple-ish, and at the same time show yellow and red as really bright and vivid as well, not pale. Non-90+CRI emitters can be really nice and pleasant, but fail in one or the other. This KD Nichia shows blue as real blue but clearly is not as good as the other two 90+CRI leds in the red/yellow area.
i think that main problem in this situation is the sensor of a digital camera, if you have custom white balance setting on your camera in which you take control shot of white card (or any other object that you know is white) the camera automatically compensates and the two pictures taken with high CRI and regular non high CRI LED will eventually look the same, on the other hand if you use same white balance setting for both LEDs ,again it will not represent the real life experience…i guess the best way is to take picture with custom white balance set on bright sunny daylight and then wait for the night but keep the same settings and take pictures of the same scenery in the night with different LEDs (at least in this way the differences will be shown but again i’m not sure about accuracy with real life experience…i have the cameras but i still haven’t decided which nichia 219 should i get (sportac triple dropin or IS bare LED’s if they are available again or to try some of KD…) EDIT: i will take djozz’s word and pass the KD 219 as it is not the high CRI…
Another victim for the tint+CRI reproduction discussion :evil: . In this thread I tried to tackle some of the problems with all of this, together with RaceR68, with meager results and finally gave up my sky-high ambitions and settled for much less than that.
you think that’s bad…well…i was actually thinking to drive to Bulgaria (Sofia) because i saw this battery shop there that apparently still have sanyo eneloop tropical (colorfull) edition 8 pack that i can not find elsewhere…now i can’t use just anything for control CRI shot…right? J)
Another thing to consider, what your eyes tell you is 'normal' depends on the lighting you spend most time in as well. Nearly all my indoor lighting is cool white stuff around 6000K, so what I expect colors to look like is different than what I'd think was normal/correct color if all my lighting was 3500K.
:D
I showed here, with the first two mouseovers how similar a 3C 75 CRI and a Nichia 219A 92+ CRI can be. There are differences though. Just because white is corrected to look white, does not mean that all colors will look correct. You will see this more easily if you compare light sources with completely different kelvin ranges. But yeah, most of my examples shows that the difference in colors is close to zero when corrected.
Feel free to try and make a 92CRI WW light looks as good as sunlight on a outdoor shot just by correcting the WB. Not going to happen. Sunlight will have the edge even when both have the right WB.
But for everyone who is really into photography, CRI is not crucial. Because once you get the white balance right, most things looks pretty good, and if it doesn't look like you want it to be, colors can always be tweaking independently in post production. If you take a picture that is lit only with artificial lighting, then its not like anyone can see and see if you are using a 70 or 80 CRI light source anyway.
Its actually the people who are not that into photography and have equipment or software or know-how to get the best out of their gear that will benefit from using emitters that work better with their cameras auto whitebalance. The typical Nichia 219A just works very well with most cameras autowb. This is probably the main reason why some say high cri is very important for photography. But for 99% of professional photographers/freelancers, CRI is not something they are even familiar with. Its not a concern.
hmm. I think I drifted a bit off topic there.. :p But its a little bit relevant.. 0:)
they have it here still, so it appears, they only sell what they have in stock so it should be ok:
http://eu.nkon.nl/8aa-sanyo-eneloop-tropical-in-blister.html
If they can't ship, I could sell it for you en send it (I am in the Netherlands, shipping costs for me are are 2.50 euro, to send it to Macedonia would be 12 euro's extra, hmm that is a lot of money already, probably more than they ask.. ).
Ha!, last time i checked nkon.nl they were out of stock…i’m actually using their VAT free russian version…RU nkon… EDIT: thanks! you saved me some 300km driving and about 20 liters of unleaded 
glad to be of help to you (and to the environment ;-)
)
i totally agree…for photo at least…i used to work as member of a team that does wedding photo & video…so i know that video is a little bit different…i noticed that “we photographers” had much less problems with things like white balance than the guys with video cameras and i can tell that “video light department” is much more concern with CRI than photo…one of the reasons for that is difficulty to accurately reproduce “skin tones” in environment that has mixed sources of light and often it is changing (depending on the location )…anyway, now i am off topic…“video light” is very large matter, maybe as large as flashlights…i guess there are forums for that too… 
:party:
:)
:beer:
Thats great because I never mentioned video. I feel we can go back on topic now.. :D
ehm, did anyone else buy any of the Nichias from KD?
just triple 219a it was so cheap! but I don’t have the “original” 219a from is to compare
for example…look at this what do you think of price/performance looking at it through flashacholic eyes (please note that in video light world there are TOO MANY clones of a clones of this comer/sony(copy)/who knows what…light… :Sp
as a flashoholic I'd say: we can do this better, mainly because we use the latest non-chinese leds that are better spec'd.
and i can tell you there are many people who pay like 250$ for this light and on top of that it works on sony camera battery pack (which by the way has 6 cells 18650 2s3p) so you must pay extra for that…i guess EagleTac MX25L3C with 6 nichia 219 b11 (with difuser) will do better job for half the price…
I was trying to explain tint and cri to a new member in a P.M. last night . I took out about 12 lights which I had modded and shot them onto the ceiling from about 3 feet away...generally on medium (approx 30 lumens ).
I was trying to impress on him that no light is a "pure white " and if it were so it probably wouldn't be what you wanted anyway .And that all light has a tint .
The names being highly misleading as
- Cool white sounds pretty much what people want in a light....white !!!
- Neutral almost always is followed by the word TINT ... OMG who wants a tinted light.?? I want bright and white !!! a TINT hell no...
- Warm sounds like campfire light .Something Alister Cook or Abraham Lincoln might read a book by .Or Torchlights used during the Spanish Inquisition. Plus ..everyone can see they are Orange ..Oh my !!
Looking up at the 12 lights shining on my ceiling I realized if I was to objectively rate just the tints like a noob who comes across a thread full of beam shots ..I'd rate them all..Pretty Poor .. One being a little green, another headed toward peachy,tan ,rosy,beige ,amber ,red,brown,yellow maybe ,a bit blueish?,purple...None of them looking even remotely white to me .Even if I add a few average, unmodified not good / not bad lights , I still come up with the same general feeling . they all sorta suck
Now remember these are mostly lights I've modded and I know that among these are the best of the best of the best . Tints that can't be found ,Emitters so good you would never part with them ...but you sure as hell can't see it in this cluster of beam-shots ..Not even right in front of you....not from a camera,not on the internet, and not as a noob.
Try it yourself with your best lights .....
Or look above in post 23 and ask yourself if either of the two pics of the 219 nichias would make anyone want to buy one ..I see grey and I see pink..and yet I know they are both exceptional lights . But it's hard to say I love the tint...
In real life I love that tint ...What you see is not what you get .
Explain that to a noob :P
I find the photo djozz took to be helpful. More so because I know how the Nichia 219A typically photographs compared with other lights. It easily shows what he is saying too, it does not have the same amount of red in it as most would probably expect with a NW 4500K-ish Nichia 219A.
It also seems like its a tad cooler (unless the red from the Nichia 219a is tricking me).
Its hard for me to judge if its a nice tint in real life, but it shows that its not what I were expecting, and it also seems to fit djozz description. I think most would expect this emitter to look like the Nichia 219A that many of us like, but it doesn't. This is something djozz described and was also able to document with a picture. :)
So Boaz, how did you explain tint and CRI?
Camera setting, obviously set it to daylight or some other preset you like and use that preset for your shots. Don’t use auto or custom off of a white paper, those are not comparable.
I find CRI really easy to see, just have blue, green, red objects, WOOD, more different wood, and the CRI shows very easily where it is.
Cree on wood is yellow it’s like WTF is that if you have an 1A-3C, gets ok with 5A but still nowhere near Nichia 219A. Cree is usually flat and only gets better as you select warmer tint, then the CRI goes slightly up but would have to take something like 7x? To get 90CRI probably.
There are three CRI versions of NVSL219B, R70 - CRI 73, R8000 - CRI 83, R85 - CRI 92.
R8000 and R85 have same chromacity listed although R8000 is likely to be more colder tint.
R70 has more colder tint.
So if you have 219B that is colder than old 219A from a reputable source (IS probably), you are likely to have a 219B that is R70 or R8000 with CRI 73 or 83.
Plus please check the voltage rank.
KD may has L2 listed for the other 219Bs.
Would be nice to find L1 rank of R85 SW45 D220 being sold. If IS had it, now it does not even list it.
It’s the opposite actually, the higher the current through 219A the higher the CRI, not only visible but measured as well. Although it is maybe 5 CRI range of change if I remember.
If you look for output and efficiency then stick to XM-L2.
XP-G2 R3 quite close to 219A B10. R2 is about the same.
So a decent high CRI 219B will be something like XP-G2 R3 or R4 at best.
If you have a dual output light, then personally I would pair the XM-L2 3C with some warmer tint that has more red. Cree 3C is quite flat yellow and still lacks reds.
Although for the road it may not matter that much and having more output rather than CRI seems more useful.
A few people that have both high CRI 219A and 219B wrote that 219B doesn’t have pinkish tint anymore maybe that’s why it may appear cooler?
Perhaps, but the tint being pinkish is a matter of the colours relative to each other, if this led would have such a high CRI as claimed it would (even with the tint being not pinkish) still reproduce reds and yellows well, and I find those colours clearly more pale than the other 90+ CRI leds. The 96CRI Oslon is not as pink as the 219A but does reproduce reds and yellows very nice.