A2-White vs Green LEDs

Owning a surefire A2 has been handy, it's my first choice of flashlight EDC next to the Arc AAA-P. After reading Green_LEDs reviews of the different LED colors, i'm confused as to which stock LED color is the brightest?

I thought the white LEDs were brightest, but according to greenLEDs review, green is brighter. Anyone else compared the 2?

Let's be careful tonight to everyone out there popping fireworks. (indoors AND out)

The green LEDs may not be physically more powerful, but they will be more visible to the human eye. If color rendition isn't important, then the green will serve you well. I find red to be quite useful, myself.

As for the fireworks, I've never seen so much smoke just hanging in the air outside. It looked like the 60s all over again!

:shakeheadhttps://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/119758

65535 said:

:shakeheadhttps://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/119758

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But I have seen more recent beam shots on CPF somewhere that show the white LED to be brigher by far. The thread had very nice photos of an aviator style watch beside the A2 aviator as well.

smoke reminds me of a lot of things.

I think surefire recently started using some Nichia white leds which are quite bright.

65535 said:

I think surefire recently started using some Nichia white leds which are quite bright.

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what is your source for this information?

Martini said:

The green LEDs may not be physically more powerful, but they will be more visible to the human eye. If color rendition isn't important, then the green will serve you well. I find red to be quite useful, myself.

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Batman, there's a couple of issues that might explain the discrepancy. The first one is what Martini mentions about our eyes' capacity to preferentially detect certain colors (green being top of the list).

Could you be thinking of one of curse's pics? Unless the pics are taken using the same camera settings I used, the apparent brightness on other picture is not to be trusted for comparison against the ones I took. It's easy to make a beamshot appear dimmer/brighter that it really is. I can tell you that the white LED A2's I had the chance to evaluate were all the same brightness.

I do not know 65535's source of info, but my white A2 is a relatively old A2, and probably isn't using the latest Nichia LED's (which are far brighter than the older Nichia ranks). If SF is indeed using latest rank Nichias, that would explain the difference between my beamshots and newer lights quite simply. The easiest would be to call SF and ask (and I should try to get a latest-gen white LED A2 and take some more pics!)

Finally, there might be a combination of color rendition/depth perception issues that make one color seem brighter/more useful than another.


So, what do you want this new A2 for? That might help decide which color might be more useful.

I thought I read about some white nichia led's in greenLeds thread. I could be wrong but it wouldn't be a bad idea for them to use nichias latest.

Yup, AFAIK, they've been using Nichia LED all along.

I just called SF and the person on the line told me the LED's in the A2 hadn't changed from the older version I have. I may call again later to reconfirm.

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago I had a AA MiniMag modded with a MadMax cyan (blue/green) led. To my eyes, the light reflected back to me appeared so bright that it hurt my eyes. I wound up selling that light as I could not use it!

Some folks use green lights when hunting. Seems that animal eyes do not reflect back the color green. Reduces the risk of someone thinking your flashlight is some animals eyes!

Now I see, thanks for the info green_led. I think I was looking at conflicting beamshots taken from 2 different cameras comparing the green & white LEDs. I guess I"ll keep the A2s that I have for now, I'm quite happy with the white LED color.

I have both a green and a white for sale in the BST forum I can do a deal for both if anyone is interested.

Hmm how much of a deal I would either go for a red or a white myself (red being my preference) thread jack Everyone should have a red A2:lolsign:

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago I had a AA MiniMag modded with a MadMax cyan (blue/green) led. To my eyes, the light reflected back to me appeared so bright that it hurt my eyes. I wound up selling that light as I could not use it!

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I know that the most sensitive wavelength of light is 555nm, green light for daytime-adjusted vision (what the lumen scale is based on). From what I understand, night adjusted vision is actually more sensitive to that cyan color, which means it will completely overpower your night vision if used in a high-intensity flashlight. See Wikipedia Article.

as a person who is very color-blind (thanks to my native american ancestry) i must ask if cyan is basically like yellow/green??? PS - if you've ever taken the Japanese color vision test with round pictures comprised of multi-colored dots,...I can only recognize the first picture,...pictures 2 on are impossible for me to discern! (each picture becomes more progressively diffucult to discern)

batman, I'm not familiar at all with that test, but let me see if I can help you:

If you can see "turquoise", then you'll most likely be able to see Cyan. Y/G tint is more of a yellowish, moss green shade, not at all similar to cyan (but I'm not sure how different you'd perceive both colors).

If color rendition was a concern of mine, I'd skip all colored LED's and go with white.

greenLED said:

Yup, AFAIK, they've been using Nichia LED all along.

I just called SF and the person on the line told me the LED's in the A2 hadn't changed from the older version I have. I may call again later to reconfirm.

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nichia leds are distinguishable from other leds for their apparent purplish tint, you;ll know what I mean if you compare nite-ize or other 3 led lights with the A2

batman said:

as a person who is very color-blind (thanks to my native american ancestry) i must ask if cyan is basically like yellow/green??? PS - if you've ever taken the Japanese color vision test with round pictures comprised of multi-colored dots,...I can only recognize the first picture,...pictures 2 on are impossible for me to discern! (each picture becomes more progressively diffucult to discern)

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Cyan is between blue and green light, in the case of an LED, that would be a spectral wavelength around 500nm.

ah, now i see. thanks for the clarification guys.