Are there any High-CRI lanterns made?

[williaty]

Thread title pretty much says it all. I'm looking for a high-CRI lantern for when the power is out. Any luminance is ok (because I have a feeling I'm taking what I can get on this one!) but bonus points for being 800lm or more. Extra points if it can also be turned down to much lower levels to provide "don't bump into things" light for many, many hours. I'd prefer it ran off a "standard" (AA, D, etc) battery that I can get good rechargables for. No fancy Li-based chemistries like RCR123/18650 unless the lantern itself takes care of charging them. Bonus points if there's a good way to adapt it to run off 12VDC or 24VDC (backup power supply in the house is 24VDC-nominal but I already have a 24V>12V stepdown converter).


Thanks!

 

[flyingtoaster]

Thread title pretty much says it all. I'm looking for a high-CRI lantern for when the power is out. Any luminance is ok (because I have a feeling I'm taking what I can get on this one!) but bonus points for being 800lm or more. Extra points if it can also be turned down to much lower levels to provide "don't bump into things" light for many, many hours. I'd prefer it ran off a "standard" (AA, D, etc) battery that I can get good rechargables for. No fancy Li-based chemistries like RCR123/18650 unless the lantern itself takes care of charging them. Bonus points if there's a good way to adapt it to run off 12VDC or 24VDC (backup power supply in the house is 24VDC-nominal but I already have a 24V>12V stepdown converter).


Thanks!

http://www.coleman.com/product/1000...2000013865?contextCategory=10400#.U2sBNMnn_qA
CRI is not advertised but this is it when it comes to electric lanterns it uses D batteries or Coleman's proprietary rechargable battery pack. It throws 1000 lumens on high and lasts 100 hours on low. The only way you can get more runtime, CRI, and lumens is to go with the Northstar dual fuel.

 

[williaty]

Yeah, I wonder what the CRI of that is? The Intermatix product line has achieved a CRI of 98 with a R9 of 99. That's AWESOME! However, there's no mention if every implementation of their product does this well or if it's possible the Coleman product is much worse.

Funnily enough, I just went for 4 days without power. We were using Coleman propane lanterns at night. With the propane lanterns, I was completely unable to tell the pink tiles from the yellow tiles in a game called Takenoko. I had to hang my Zebralight H51fc above the playing area. Were were all really shocked how much just that single headlamp totally changed everyone's ability to see the colors on the tiles.

 

[flyingtoaster]

Yeah, I wonder what the CRI of that is? The Intermatix product line has achieved a CRI of 98 with a R9 of 99. That's AWESOME! However, there's no mention if every implementation of their product does this well or if it's possible the Coleman product is much worse.

Funnily enough, I just went for 4 days without power. We were using Coleman propane lanterns at night. With the propane lanterns, I was completely unable to tell the pink tiles from the yellow tiles in a game called Takenoko. I had to hang my Zebralight H51fc above the playing area. Were were all really shocked how much just that single headlamp totally changed everyone's ability to see the colors on the tiles.

I can't speak for the 1000 lumen lantern, but Phaserburn bought one and posted his initial impressions.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?380865-New-Coleman-1000-LUMEN-CPX%99-6-LANTERN

As for gas mantles, I never knew they had such a poor color spectrum. I use Peerless mantles rather than Coleman because they produce a much whiter light. Peerless are thorium based and Coleman are yttrium.

 

[williaty]

Yeah, I was SHOCKED at the color rendition difference. I had thought that mantle light was continuous-spectrum. I think we've got a spectrograph somewhere, so I may be trying to find that and see if there's big holes in the emission spectrum.

 

[Poppy]

http://www.coleman.com/product/1000...2000013865?contextCategory=10400#.U2sBNMnn_qA
CRI is not advertised but this is it when it comes to electric lanterns it uses D batteries or Coleman's proprietary rechargable battery pack. It throws 1000 lumens on high and lasts 100 hours on low. The only way you can get more runtime, CRI, and lumens is to go with the Northstar dual fuel.

About a year ago (maybe more) I considered getting coleman lanterns with the XPS rechargeable batteries. I didn't in part because there were a number of reviews complaining that the battery didn't hold a charge.

 

[TEEJ]

Keep in mind that at low lux levels, your eyes start to night-adapt, and you lose color vision...so the CRI will not really have any impact, as your vision will be B&W, or, mostly B&W, depending on HOW dim the light levels are. IE: If you are running on low, your Takenocko tiles will be harder to differentiate...and adding lux, such as with a ZL H51, etc, will allow the eye to use more cones, adding color vision back.

 

[williaty]

Keep in mind that at low lux levels, your eyes start to night-adapt, and you lose color vision...so the CRI will not really have any impact, as your vision will be B&W, or, mostly B&W, depending on HOW dim the light levels are. IE: If you are running on low, your Takenocko tiles will be harder to differentiate...and adding lux, such as with a ZL H51, etc, will allow the eye to use more cones, adding color vision back.

Good point, but with had two propane lanterns totaling almost 2k lumens in the immediate vicinity of the table. You generally wouldn't call a 150W incandescent at 3' "low light", really. My wife (physicists) raised the point that the mantle fluoresces, making it a discontinuous emitter, so it probably has a pretty bad CRI.

 

[TEEJ]

Good point, but with had two propane lanterns totaling almost 2k lumens in the immediate vicinity of the table. You generally wouldn't call a 150W incandescent at 3' "low light", really. My wife (physicists) raised the point that the mantle fluoresces, making it a discontinuous emitter, so it probably has a pretty bad CRI.

It very well might have poor CRI, especially if the spectrum is missing what's needed to resolve tile colors, etc.

As for the level of lighting, lux rather than lumens would be a better unit of measure.

If the light is emitted in a sphere, the actual lux levels are not that high, as those lumens are painted over a very large surface area, etc.

You had not mentioned there being two ~1k lanterns ~ 3' away, so I can take that into account too. I'm not sure where the 150 W incan comes into play though? Considered equivalent to 2k?



How far were each of the lanterns from the tiles in question, and, how much overlap was there in there individual pools of light (As in, was one at each end of the picnic table, with the tiles in the middle, etc?)

 

[flyingtoaster]

I would like to print out some Ishihara plates sometime and take some pictures under mantle light, sunlight, and incandescent light.

 

[TEEJ]

I would like to print out some Ishihara plates sometime and take some pictures under mantle light, sunlight, and incandescent light.

Excellent idea!

:thumbsup: