Your Anodizing Preference?

I'm a "gray" anodizing man myself. What kind of color body do you prefer or does that not even matter?

I only buy black flashlights because most of the companies only produce black ones. I wish more companies would jump on the gray bandwagon, even if they just did limited runs. Would rather have gray limited edition than stainless steel.

I applaud companies like Surefire and Jetbeam who produce a good amount of lights in various shades of gray. I wish more companies would do this, like Fenix for example. I don't understand their line of reasoning in having an "Olive" color line but not "gray." Looks like the discontinued the olive in their newer lines, but still have it on the E01. Why not gray?

I guess black is popular and that's why most lights are made in that color. Just wish there were more shades of gray out there.

As weird as this sounds, if my L2D was gunmetal gray, I'd probably use it more.

I prefer black or silver.

Grey like C2H. I like Black too especially if it's super matt by the anno.

HA-BK :rock:

My favorite is probably the "natural" of the old Arc LS and AA. Really like the look of Fenix "olive", too. The old Jetbeam C-LE had a nice gray-green. And then there's the Surefire natural. They're all sort of similar, I guess.

Geoff

I always liked the olive color like Longbow used on their lights even though each different part had a different shade.

I don't have a preference.

OD baby.

Splash ano in blue and orange. :rock:

Gray and silver. Black is cool but when I saw an E1B in silver HA-III I just had to have it!

I like grey as well, or slightly greenish grey. I guess I am in the minority when I say I don't like black over any type of natural HAIII finish. One of the reasons I sold my E2DL was because it was black. Black just looks cheap and ordinary to me when compared to HAIII-NAT. I mean, look at a 6P in black and a 6P in natural HAIII. No comparison in my book.

Black bodies have the highest emissive properties so... black is my fave. either type II or III.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissivity

HA NAT. Especially the OD tinted type.

Followed by HA-BK.

Type II black is so '80s maglite...!

Not a fan of silver.

4sevens has posted about the demand that he has actually seen for olive vs black in the Fenix's, I found it very interesting to read:

gunga said:

If the LD01 was sold in a few different colours... man, that would be KILLER!

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4sevens said:

We see the ACTUAL sales of colored e01's. Black sells by far more than any other color. Olive is about 1/3 of blacks and each of the colors are about 1/2 of olive. The ACTUAL demand is tiny. For some reason people just like black. Of course colors are attractive and nice in advertising, eventually people just settle with black. Go figure. :shrug:

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4sevens said:

We are way over-stock of olive L0D Q4's. I also checked the total number sold. Compared to black it doesn't even come close to 1/3. I know before we had the olive L0D Q4, there was almost a riot demanding them. When we rolled them out, they trickled out like a wounded cactus in the blistering sun. Well... not like that exactly, but you get the point. Don't worry, I'm not anti-olive or anti-colors - just saying that olive is not as in demand as it looks like from threads on CPF.

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I prefer the natural color HA as used by SureFire. My SureFires and my Zebralight look awesome. I also really liked the grey anodization on my LF5xt.

HA, anything other than Black. I really don't like black, but there might be a couple exceptions. Twisty is quite dark (black?), it seems OK.

Current JetBeams are very nice, Silver P1D was nice, Olive P3D was nice. Aeon NA is nice. Original OD NovaTac was very nice.

4sevens said:

Nope. We are way over-stock of olive L0D Q4's. ...

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I have to laugh, try to find one now... there out there, but not so easy... I don't think you can get them from 4sevens anymore.

One big thing might be: with black you don't tend to get as much color mismatch between the different parts. Fenix original Natural, and Olive almost always had mismatches. My P3D is not too bad, but on my L0D its is quite noticeable, and on my L2D it looks like a different color.

People might choose black because they don't like the color mismatch.

The SF C2-HA ia also awesome in color and ano quality.

Most of my bigger lights are in discrete colors (i.e. black), but I like more colorfull lights:

Maglites were made to be black. I've bought funny-colored minimags as gifts (including a hot pink one that almost hurt my eyes, but caused my teen sister inordinate glee), but all mine are black. I did put a polished SS bezel on one the other day, and (heresy!) I actually kinda like it, especially from the front, with a shiny reflector in a shiny bezel. I've also got a Ni-plated one coming for an HID mod. But silver and even pewter (which I like better) anodize don't look as good as black, nickel, or chrome.

On non-Mags, black is a good basic choice, but natural or olive aren't bad either. It just doesn't matter that much, since I don't go ninjaing about in the dark or soldiering through jungles.

HA is a nice extra, but honestly doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't and won't have any shelf queens (and if I did, I guess they'd be treated tenderly enough that HA wouldn't be needed), and I don't mind if my working lights (i.e., all of them) look like they work for a living. HA doesn't offer much protection against serious damage, but against harmless (if ugly) wear and tear.

Kestrel said:

4sevens has posted about the demand that he has actually seen for olive vs black in the Fenix's, I found it very interesting to read:

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To me, Olive is not gray though. Good to see them posting about sales but I'd be curious about their gray flashlight sales as opposed to black. I'm pretty sure gray numbers have to be better than olive.