What's new and relevant changes. The day will come when cree emitters are obsolete, and what replaces those will become obsolete.Don't despair in what has become a thing of the past. Grab on to the future of what some nice emitters are becoming.
A sad incandescent day today
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ICs might have been rare, and regulated expensive, but PCBs aren't uncommon, and you can get LED torches w/o them. Also, under and over driving have been common to do for a very, very, long time.
Just some fancy ones. It's equally easy to get them with proper off modes.
For replacement bulbs for COTS flashlights? Absolutely. Beyond that, I doubt much will change. Much of the modding going on here won't be affected, the hosts will still be plentiful, and certain bulb form factors are going to be around for a very long time, even if the box won't say Streamlight, Surefire, or Mag Instrument. Given how the internet allows niche markets to not need to be too time-consuming and expensive for the consumer, it won't be nearly that bad.
In fact, tube amps have had quite a resurgence over the last decade or so, much thanks to people being able to source parts much more easily than in the days between solid state's take-over and the web.
Also, don't get rid of what works, even if it may be old, just because there's newer. The makers follow what they think the market wants, which also means a slim minority of users with good reasons for not wanting the new thing may be left in the cold.
think2x
Flashlight Enthusiast
I can't find whale oil for my old lamps anymore either.
I'm pretty sure you're not looking hard enough because they still make whales.
I almost choked on my burger!
great stuff!
Remembering this is the Incandescent section of the forum, and having seen these type of comments many many times in the past, for new comers, here's the difference in perspectives from how I have long seen it.
There are many scenarios where the various features of incand lighting is superior. Same goes for LED, HID, Fluorscents, LASERS, Lens/Mirrors, and even oil lamps, candles, matches, or burning torches on a stick. It is just ignorant for LED Jockeys to say any one technology is best, or other technologies are dead. During an intimate dinner, I'm lighting candles, with dimmed background incands to set the mood.
Besides fixed lighting in and around my home which is 95% incand, 4% CFL, and 1% 4 foot long fluorescent, I own 200-400 portable Incands, 100 -200 LED's, 15-20 HID's, 8 LASERS, 5-6 Oil lanterns, various Fresnel and/or mirror devices, etc. etc.
There is nothing that leaves a person who has a balanced appreciation of many technologies "out in the cold." We can, and do purchase quality LED and other lights as we see fit. However, most people who are hyper-fixated on LED's or buy lighting based upon lumens per watt efficiency as the most important factor--decided long ago that all incands are a sickly, anemic orange, whose bulb life is as pathetic as an ice cube on a July afternoon in El Paso Texas. That is their misguided misunderstanding often brought up to justify their technology to appear as "superior."
Never mind that I have the same WA 1185 bulb in a 2005 FiveMega 3D mod that gets used nearly every week. Never mind that I have had a 20,000 hr 60W incan bulb giving a nice bright white color running in a room 24/7 since I installed it October 26, 2010 (28 months) which works out to 19,488 hours--not including the Hurricane Sandy power outage. The 10 times as expensive CFL in a matching lamp failed after 10 months.
idleprocess
Flashaholic
We all justify/rationalize our preferences various ways. LED and floro fans do tend to focus on efficiency, but that's hardly the only thing. I'm a fan of LED's and personally find the overall color temperature for ~4000K LED more pleasing than that of incan / floro in addition to the longer rated life and efficiency. I'll agree that the efficiency argument is overblown for most people where lighting is such a small percentage of the residence's overall energy / electricity consumption, and thus should not receive so much attention as major appliances and climate control.
I hear the incan fans raving about spectrum all the time and claim that none of the CFL/warm LED options are sufficient - and if that floats their boat, cool. But just like audiophiles and blind A/B tests between CD/vinyl or solid/state tube amps, a significant majority of them population can't consistently tell the difference with warm LED. I'm sure there are niche cases - such as some color-matching situations - where the comparison would clearly favor one or the other, but for most of the market it doesn't seem to matter.
Operating costs dwarf purchase price for both technologies anyway, so focusing on purchase price misses the bigger picture when discussing cost.
Curious how you managed to spend ten times as much on a CFL as an incandescent - special-application bulb or something?
jtr1962
Flashaholic
It's important to remember this your set of views and preferences here. Obviously there are certain scenarios where one of the options you mention might be markedly superior, or perhaps even the only possibility. For example, nobody is using LEDs in an oven, and nothing but a laser is suitable for reading an optical disk. That said, when choosing between options which can all do the job, one will tend to focus on what's most important to them. They may even use different criteria in different situations. The end result could be one person uses 95% LEDs and another person uses 95% incandescents.
I'll offer you an alternate view here. I think most of the people posting on CPF lived the majority of their lives during a time when incandescent was just about the only viable option for most portable lighting (those fluorescent campling lanterns notwithstanding). Many even have lived much of their lives during the time when there really weren't many residential lighting options besides incandescent except maybe T12 fluorescents. We had plenty of time to become thoroughly familiar with this technology. Perhaps some are embracing newer technology with what you might see as a fanaticism (i.e. "LED jockeys") because the characteristics of incandescent made us loathe it. Once something even slightly better came along, that's it, we were done with it. For some the reason was indeed the color of the light. For others it was the relatively short lifetime. For still others it may have been the lack of efficiency. For most it was a combination of all three. And yet you see this as misguided misunderstanding. Maybe we do understand things, and we understand that for close to 100% of our uses there's nothing superior about incandescents compared to the alternatives. Right now I don't anticipate more than three incandescents remaining in service in my place by year's end. One is in a seldom used hallway light which happens to have a dimmer. I'm not buying an expensive dimmable LED or CFL bulb for something which is seldom used. The other is in the attic where I go maybe once a year. The last one is in the oven. Outside of those three, we have two chandeliers which I'll be converting to LED by year's end. Emitter cost and efficiency finally reached the point where it made sense to do this. Truthfully, we didn't have all that many more incandescents than this even 20 years ago. Some table lamps were incandescent before CFLs came out, but most everything was linear fluorescent except the aforementioned chandeliers.
Remember there's nothing stopping you from enjoying your incandescents even if the world goes 100% LED. Hobbyists still play with tube amplifiers, steam engines, all sorts of other technologies which are technically "dead" as far as use by the masses goes.
Woods Walker
The Wood is cut, The Bacon is cooked, Now it’s tim
[h=2]Incandescent Flashlights[/h](8 Viewing)
JCD
Enlightened
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So many self-proclaimed flashaholics, yet so few true connoisseurs! :-D
jtr1962
Flashaholic
This is interesting.
This is a development in incandescent which even I can get excited about. By reflecting back the IR, they can increase the efficiency enormously while keeping the visible spectrum the same. 45 lm/W has been demonstrated in the lab. I think part of the allure of LED for a lot of us here is the fact that it's a quickly evolving technology. In ten years, LEDs went from being less efficient than an incandescent to well over ten times as efficient. We've even hit close to twenty times as efficient in the lab (276 lm/W to be precise). And at the same time binning, color rendering, and consistency have all improved enormously, while cost have dropped by at least a factor of ten. Meanwhile, until not long ago incandescent was pretty much stagnant. The 100 watt bulbs you could buy in 2010 weren't really any different than the ones you could buy when I was in grade school. But now it seems incandescent might be evolving, at least for general lighting use (I think LED pretty much has portable lighting sewn up as far as the masses are concerned). Although not discussed in the article (except for stating it can produce warm white light to cool white light), it appears they may also be able to reflect back a portion of the visual spectrum. Or put another way, instead of using a blue coating to make an incandescent appear "whiter" (and greatly reducing efficiency in the process), the undesired light in the visual spectrum will just be reflected back to keep the filament at running temperature, actually enhancing efficiency further. This solves two major issues with incandescents-low efficiency, and the lack of any light color other than warm white. Cost seems the major issue here with making a viable product. These can't cost that much more than today's incandescents or most people will just opt for LED with its even greater efficiency and much longer life (LED bulbs are projected to drop below $5 by 2020). I still see LED largely taking over, even if these are a commercial success, but I definitely see a pretty big niche market for a more efficient incandescent.
This is a development in incandescent which even I can get excited about. By reflecting back the IR, they can increase the efficiency enormously while keeping the visible spectrum the same. 45 lm/W has been demonstrated in the lab. I think part of the allure of LED for a lot of us here is the fact that it's a quickly evolving technology. In ten years, LEDs went from being less efficient than an incandescent to well over ten times as efficient. We've even hit close to twenty times as efficient in the lab (276 lm/W to be precise). And at the same time binning, color rendering, and consistency have all improved enormously, while cost have dropped by at least a factor of ten. Meanwhile, until not long ago incandescent was pretty much stagnant. The 100 watt bulbs you could buy in 2010 weren't really any different than the ones you could buy when I was in grade school. But now it seems incandescent might be evolving, at least for general lighting use (I think LED pretty much has portable lighting sewn up as far as the masses are concerned). Although not discussed in the article (except for stating it can produce warm white light to cool white light), it appears they may also be able to reflect back a portion of the visual spectrum. Or put another way, instead of using a blue coating to make an incandescent appear "whiter" (and greatly reducing efficiency in the process), the undesired light in the visual spectrum will just be reflected back to keep the filament at running temperature, actually enhancing efficiency further. This solves two major issues with incandescents-low efficiency, and the lack of any light color other than warm white. Cost seems the major issue here with making a viable product. These can't cost that much more than today's incandescents or most people will just opt for LED with its even greater efficiency and much longer life (LED bulbs are projected to drop below $5 by 2020). I still see LED largely taking over, even if these are a commercial success, but I definitely see a pretty big niche market for a more efficient incandescent.
I like my Streamlight Strion incan. and the Pila / Wolf eyes incan. I had back in the day. I hope the new technology is allowed to flourish and is not stamped out by ever increasing efficiency requirements by governments. IMHO ican. lighting issues are often seen as the realm of "fringe groups" so it doesn't often get much favorable play with the press.
Well, I have always said that I am interested and supportive of new technologies, including LED's. People have told me about the various Nichia warm emitters, and I have tried a High CRI model from HDS, and several Nailbender D26 dropins for these FM lights, and several from Saabluster. None of them are remotely close to performing like a quality incand--especially for rendering true-to-life colors, and multi-spectral contrast outside. They just have a warmer peak Kelvin temp due to things like LED coating. If you know of radically better improvements, let me know and I'll try them as well.
I disagree with your characterization of the savings as "dwarfing" the purchase price. For the average homeowner who doesn't leave lights on when they leave rooms, the share of an electric bill due to lighting is a very small percentage. Buying high CRI quality CFL & LED's that would work (as opposed to the CFL that failed much sooner than advertised and had no dimming) are still not at the cheap price that quality incands were. That's why the government liberals who decide what's best for everyone (which is almost never the case) passed legislation banning them.
Assuming this is a serious query, it is a simple 3rd grade economics division problem where the numerator is $10-15 CFL's (when I bought them at Home Despot), and the demoninator is a range of 50 cents to $1.10 for various quality brands of incands. I won't get into the prices of the light bulb socket LED replacements.
JTR, IRC incan bulbs have been around for quite a number of years, and you will see a number of them having been evaluated in my incand destructive bulb tests in the pinned topics. I could have sworn that you and I discussed them in similar LED vs. Incan debates years ago. They are wonderful technology developments in this area. My earlier comment about misguided misunderstanding relates specifically to those who apparently have always hated everything about incandescent bulbs, and describe them as some shade of sickly orange, and having ridiculously short life spans to exaggerate making your point. I have never used sickly orange unless I am intentionally putting an incand on a dimmer. I am sure that there are variations in retinal color perceptions and spectral preferences, but that is not a common feature used to describe modern incandescents.
Woods Walker mentioned the reduced numbers viewing the Incan section of the forums. Right now only 2 are viewing Budget Lights, and there are similar low counts viewing Lasers, Special Application Lighting, Custom Forge, Darkroom, etc. I guess all those areas are dead too. :ironic:
Hate to quote my own post. But I was no way implying that incans are dead. Just two weeks ago I bought replacement bulbs from LF for my E1e and E2e surefires so that I can run them on rcr 123 batteries. I already have plenty of spare bulbs for my C2 Centurian. I really enjoy using my incans. But I also enjoy LED's for what they do. But there is always that, IMO, one missing ingredient to bring high cri led's up to the incan tint.
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jtr1962
Flashaholic
I recall that discussion. This recent development is a further evolution on that. Remember at the time IRC was maybe doubling efficiency which isn't bad, but still well short of other technologies. It seems if I read that article correctly we'll be able to at least exceed CFL efficiency, perhaps even get close to 100 lm/W, all while retaining the characteristics of incandescent light which those like yourself admire. Moreover, apparently we'll also be able to have incandescents which are higher CCT without blue filters which waste light. Again, this is a very significant development because it means both low and high CCT light, plus everything in between, all with close to 100 CRI, and all with excellent efficiency.
As far as "sickly orange" descriptions go, remember that we all perceive things differently. Your nice shade of white could be my sickly orange, while my nice shade of white could be your x-ray blue. Personally, I find overdriven incans like one might find in a flashlight or a projector lamp acceptable, but remember that whiter light comes at the cost of lifetime measured in some tens of hours. Therefore, such lamps wouldn't be viable for general lighting. The more common ~3000K halogen looks decided yellow to me. And once you get to the 2700K of a 40 watt bulb, you're into orange. The candelabra bulbs running at 2500K or 2600K are well into "sickly orange" territory.
Anyway, this new technology seems to solve two of the three issues I have with incandescents. The third, lifetime, really doesn't matter much if they can be made inexpensively enough. Certainly anything similar or better than the ~1000 hours people have been used to will be acceptable.
The Xicato Artist series of LEDs has a CRI of 97 or 98, and is available in CCTs of 3000K, 3500K, and 4000K. I've never seen one in action so I can't vouch for how close it is to incandescent, but the spectrum of the 3000K version looks very close. The only issue is these are LED arrays made for general lighting. I'm not sure if they would be viable for flashlights. You could definitely make a nice camping lantern with one though.
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idleprocess
Flashaholic
I'm not going to argue subjective impressions, being that they're personal and it wastes time all around. If something does or doesn't do it for you, vote with your wallet.
There are narrow slices of the population that can tell the difference in blind tests for general lighting, and the rest of the population. The latter, being the overwhelming majority, determine where the markets go.
The costs of operating it dwarfs its purchase price.
I pay $0.13 / kWH, so I'll use that for comparison.
A 60W Incan uses 60 kWH per 1000 hours of operation, which would cost me $7.80. Operating your 20k hour incandescent would cost me $156.
A 13W CFL (nominally labelled as 60W incan equivalent) uses 13 kWH per 1000 hours of operation, which would cost me $1.69; if it makes it the ~8000hrs I often see CFL's rated for, operating cost is $13.52. If a CFL would last the same 20k hours as your incandescent, its operating cost would amount to $33.80.
The purchase price for either is pretty trivial when you look at the lifetime cost of its electricity consumption. There are some complications such as utilities that charge for power factor correction, but the worst power factor I've seen is around 0.80, which would not distort the CFL's "billed" power consumption by enough to change the balance much.
I can buy name brand A19 incans for $0.50 - $1 each; halogens are around the $2 mark. The overwhelming bulk of name-brand A19 CFL's go for $2 each with some specialty models reaching $4; last time I saw them costing around $10 was about 10 years ago when they were relatively new to the mass market (and far better quality). I can find some niche special-application bulbs for $10 each, but those are non-A19. So the spread is 8 at most, typically 4, 2 at least; half those numbers for halogens.
Run the numbers on a LED replacement and you'll see that its total cost of ownership is lower than incan assuming it makes its purported operating lifespan, but not as good as CFL. My personal shallow sample depth suggests that they will tend to last something close to their rated lives.
Cost isn't everything, but purchase price never tells the entire story on total cost of ownership.
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I tried looking up the difference between the two terms but came up with negative results. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but could you explain the difference between tint and CRI? I always enjoy learning something new.:thanks:
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idleprocess
Flashaholic
For a white light source, tint describes its white balance point. When you see Correlated Color Temperatures (CCT) being tossed around such as 2700K or 4000K, that is describing a 1-D measurement of where along a curve through color space known as the black body curve the white point is closest to. Perversely, the lower the CCT the warmer it is described as due to the red dominance of its spectrum (2700K is fairly warm); conversely, the higher the CCT, the cooler it is described as due to the blue dominance of its spectrum (5000K is usually perceived as cool).
A more accurate description of tint are the CIE color coordinates, which are often used to describe tint bins for white LED's - this narrows down the white point to a more precise 2D region and better expresses its white balance point. By their nature, incandescents always lie on the blackbody curve, thus a CCT is generally sufficient to describe their white balance point.
CRI is Color Rendering Index, a measurement of how accurately a white light source renders colors. By the very definition of the measurement, incandecents have a perfect score of 100. White LED, which has color spectrum different than that of incandescent, does not hit 100 (especially with the more efficient cool white LED's common on the marketplace), but as others have mentioned there are products on the market hitting 90, and some tricks to hit the high 90s. There are other measurements of color quality besides CRI, but it is the most common.
LEDAdd1ct
Flashlight Enthusiast
Whenever I see Lux, jtr, and idle all together in the same thread I know I am always in for a spirited discussion! I absolutely love reading your (plural) posts (have for years now, before and after becoming a board member) and appreciate how people can have such radically varying opinions.
Can you post a link to the source of this information? LED Add1cts want to know...
jtr1962;4147012[COLOR=#333333 said:
Can you post a link to the source of this information? LED Add1cts want to know...
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jtr1962
Flashaholic
idleprocess
Flashaholic
I'm glad somebody is reading...
jtr and I cross paths with some regularity ... a bit less frequent that LuxLuthor and I are conversing in a thread, but spirited is indeed an apt description when it happens.
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