I haven’t actually owned anything with SST-70 yet, but from what I’ve seen and heard the tint shift is as bad or worse than SST-40 and has greenish tint when run below high current with CC drivers:
These are the beamshots from my SST70 test, left with small S2+ OP reflector, right with smooth X6 reflector. The led was at 1A.
No tint shifts and the tint is about correct in the picture so there is something different here, maybe later production batches were awful?
In any case, if different tints are photographed in one picture as in the zeroair pic, the white balance for at least one of them is not as you see in reality.
I’ve tested 3 lights now with sst70:
Imalent R30C
Fenix Tk16 V2.0
Fenix PD36 Tac
All are green to some extent, some worse than others, but not terrible. I guess it depends on whether you get a good bin or not. Currently, sst70 is CW only. Never seen anything under 6500k.
Spot optics, wide angle optics, there’s a large range of various sizes and varying beams for different purposes, the utility alone of having such options and being able to change beam patterns would be very appealing and would surely have an impact on sales.
Build a light with the right proportions so people can pick and choose various optics to suit their needs.
Your beamshot doesn’t show noticeable green… must be a different batch?
My only experience with SST70 at this time is from a Sofirn SD05 (which previously came in XHP50.2, and later became SST70)
Following pictures are from “screengrab” from my beamshot comparison video of SD05 (XHP50.2) vs SD05 (SST70), so the images are a bit blurry, but the color comparison between XHP50.2 vs SST70 should be noticeable…
SD05 (XHP50.2 cool-white) [left] vs SD05 [SST70) [right]
SD05 both on HIGH brightness = colors look pretty OK (not ‘greenish’ just basing on the image)
SDO5 both on MEDIUM brightness = the SST70 starts to show “greenish”
SD05 both on LOW brightness = SST70 is more throwy than XHP50.2 and there’s still the “greenish” hue compared to the XHP50.2
And sub-lumen moonlight is what the majority of users are going to want. The idea is to have a minimal amount of light to be able to see and be discreet and not hurt night-adapted eyes. Very important feature to most of us.
If it’s a floody beam, 1-2lm shouldn’t hurt night-vision, as intensity is less, being more spread-out.
If it’s throwy, just the opposite.
And sublumen should then be more properly be called “firefly” instead of “moonlight”.
Me, I prefer moonlight over firefly, as I’m mostly looking for stuff on the floor or just walking in pitch-blackness, vs checking a map or watchface.
In my GTmicro, which runs Narsim and is about as throwy as you can get, I configged “moonlight” (shortcut press’n’hold from off) to 1, the lowest, and a fractional-second longer for “floor”. So I can choose between firefly and moonlight depending how long I press from off.
So maybe something like that… press’n’hold shortcut can take you to firefly first (eg, 1sec) and jump to moonlight after (eg, 1½sec).
Not disturbing others sleeping, keeping dark adaptation for eyes, reading maps, looking inside bag at night or other close-up tasks where even 1-2lm can be harsh and too bright. The <1lm modes on the M150 and H04 is one of their best features and something that makes them really stand out from many other competing lights at similar price.
Some situations require a better preservation of night vision.
Here’s a UI idea on managing it.
Activate moonlight.
Click, Click+HOLD — shifts moonlight to next intensity. 0.3 lm, 0.5 lm, 1 lm, and 2 lm are the levels. After 2lm, intensity resets back to 0.3 lm. Whatever intensity you had set your moonlight, it will be recalled anytime moonlight is activated. Another idea would be if you do click, click+hold and continue holding, for each 2 seconds it steps up to the next intensity until 2 lm, then resets after that.