The thinking behind the Zebra H31r and H51r RED Headlamps?

[Bolster]

PM your way Inliner.

 

[StandardBattery]

Hi don't know if they had an intended market or customer for these, but my initial impressions are good. I really like them and I'm surprised by how bright they are, as well as how low the lowest low is. I'm going to try to compare to the H501r at some point. Was thinking if I wanted to try some diffusion film on it. I have found it works good at night with the lights out to ballance the bright computer screen in a darrk room... the red is good enough and I don't need to turn on a small light. Have to keep the light away from directly illuminating the screen though, that just make it look ugly and has a very bad refelection. I'm thinking with diffusion it would be good for Kindle reading at night.

 

[B0wz3r]

Just an FYI, there is a red LED flashlights thread over in the flashlights section if anyone wants to check it out. I posted a lot there on night vision issues, and the differences between red-orange and true deep red, and night-vision green tints.

Sorry, I'm too lazy to search for and copy the link right now. I'll get it for you guys later.

 

[privard]

I'm scratching my head over the release of the H31r and the H51r. ... So...who do these appeal to? And for what purpose?

I use mine on low-medium for hiking in woods (high-medium if it's a brighter night). Great for walking down a dark trail without breaking my leg, and impact on night vision is a lot less than a white light. Also I can fire it up to high to see something a little farther away, again without nearly the penalty a white light would have on my dark vision--I generally walk at night without a light on and just turn it on briefly for especially dark stretches under tree cover or if there's no moon at all, so maintaining my dark adaptation is important to me. 675 nm is better for night vision--but it's so close to the limit of human visibility that it'd have to be incredibly bright to be of any use for walking on uneven terrain. My H51r is a great compromise between having enough light and maintaining my night vision. I also use it on the low modes for night photograpy and astrophotography--the lowest for basic dial and knob settings if it's really dark, the "high" low for reading LCD screens when I have to. "Low" low has no noticeable affect on my dark vision (it's VERY low); "high" low only a slight affect that my dark-adapted vision recovers from pretty quickly.

So scratch no longer--maybe it doesn't work for you, but it does for me and for at least enough other people to make it worthwhile for Zebralight to keep making these things.

And if you can't find an H50r-style light that's wide and diffuse enough for you, sticking something over the lens of an H51r or H31r takes only a few seconds (hint: saran wrap is a cheap and easy way to keep anything in place; just keep as much of the head uncovered as possible for cooling if you plan to use high modes).

 

[Yogazoo]

The h51r in this video http://youtu.be/Ca--dvX8F8s appears to have a bit of sidespill unless the camera is adding to the effect. I personally only use red light for getting into my favorite hunting spot. Large ungulates have greater difficulty seeing red light and it's not as intrusive. I think the H51r is just the light (headlamp) I've been looking for. Most red LED's on the current crop of headlamps are an afterthought (extremely dim).

 

[Pacecar]

A "brilliant spot red headlamp" is useful for racoon and coyote hunting. The eyes of those animals are somewhat colorblind to the red spectrum, yet their eyes highly reflect the red light to make it easier to detect the animal.