Warm white vs incandescents

[alpg88]

in my experience it varies
i had a 600w halogen light in my bathroom, 2 bulbs 300w each, i replaced them with 9x 2700k xml2 s6 bin iirc, 90+ cri. i drive them at about 1a each, on the outside the light stayed the same, a curved frosted glass box, when i turned it first time, i did not notice any difference in tint, or how i saw colors, it looked exactly like a bulb looked few hours before, there is no optics on leds, just frosted glass in front of them,
other times i use other warm leds, i can tell it is not a bulb, all depends on a led and optics.

 

[idleprocess]

Many references to "high CRI" in this thread. Of note is that while all light sources that render colors accurately are also high CRI, not all high CRI sources render colors accurately. Human vision has peak sensitivity in an almost normal curve centered at green (555nm) while the typical incandescent has almost 90% relative intensity at the transition from NIR to red, dropping almost linearly to about 5% at the transition from violet to NUV (green averages about 35%). Halogen far better replicates the sensitivity curve than incandescent, but warm white LED is also close.

I can't speak to subjective preferences, of course. But having transitioned my residence to CFL 20 years ago then LED more than 10 years ago I don't miss incandescents. Low-end incandescent flashlight bulbs always looked terrible to me - just a step up from candlelight with everything cast in shades of brown, red, yellow. My brief experiments with better halogen bulbs were more satisfying, but power consumption was high and lifespan short. Early LED flashlights were a compromise - longer battery life and smaller lights in exchange for dim angry blue. But about a decade ago LEDs started achieving CRI fit to print (and generally color rendering accuracy to match), tints that were <=5000K, and bumps in output that won the argument.

But I'm in a weird place when it comes to the lighting market. I don't like 2700K, find 5000K a bit much for anything other than a workspace, and even think 3000K is a bit too warm. I miss the 3500K T5 circline fixture I used to have in my dining room - such an ideal color for me. 4000K is about the closest I can get in monolithic fixtures. For applications with multiple bulbs I try to mix 5000K/2700K - 1:1 will achieves ~3850K while 2:1 hits ~3467K.

 

[Greenbean]

If I recall correctly, the target distance in the pics was probably 2-3ft. One was a P60 bulb in a Surefire 6P and the other was a modded Maratac inspection light with the 219b SW35. Considering that, the P60 would have a tighter beam and so with that fact, it's probably the first pic that is the P60 and the second pic the 219b.

And I realize taking photos with a smartphone for tint comparison presents many issues, but realistically, those two photos are pretty true with what I saw with my eyes. The 219b sw35 is an amazing LED.

Great pics showing the comparison.

Only reason I say 1st is LED and 2nd is the Incan is the beam artifacts present in the second pic.


I agree the runtime on my Darksucks 2xAA is one of the reasons I carry it more than my E2D with a 1x16650 Tad bulb and socket in it.

Still at times I absolutely LOVE the hot spot off the Incan! Even in ambient lighting situations and I need to inspect machinery and look for anomalies sometimes I can't believe I don't just carry the Incan more. The way the natural hot spot grabs the eye is also very pleasing. Instead of a flood of warm beautiful light.

Hope that makes sense,


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Scotty321]

Most warm white LEDs don't measure up to a real incan light in terms of color rendering. Like someone said, an incan is technically 100 cri. With that though, the LED that comes closest to an incan would be the Nichia 219b SW35 LED. Below is a pic of the Nichia and a Surefire P60 incan bulb. To be honest, I don't remember which one is which.

Although I could be wrong, I would guess that the Nichia was the bottom pic.

Although the 219b should be better than my 219c, the box with colors I flashed with the Brinkmann vs TK18 exhibited a similar reduction in color contrast as the "fall soccer sign up" advertisement on the bottom pic... particularly in the upper right quadrant near the pink and yellow marker caps.

 

[KITROBASKIN]

Informative post from idleprocess. We too ended up mixing LED bulbs in bathroom to get the light 'Goldilocks' right.

 

[greenpondmike]

You're welcome aznsx.
vicv, I forgot about rechargeables. Must of had alkalines on my mind.

A lot of informative posts for sure. Last night at work I shined my 2aaa led mini mag through my truck window and then tried the ml25it.
The mini mag had a lot of glare back at 100 lumens, but at 30 lumens the ml25 lit that cat up real good even though I was also shining it through the window and it did it with way less glare.

 

[ampdude]

Yeah with some it's like dollar signs are coming out the front with the beam.

And that old viewpoint makes zero sense to me since there are so many rechargeable options for incan lights, and lithium primaries are not very expensive these days and haven't been expensive for a long time. Even all of my HID lights run off of either lead acid or lithium ion rechargeable batteries. I would like one that could run off of lithium primaries though as well.

 

[bykfixer]

Interesting link GPM - thanx! I don't have any LEDs with an incandescent-range CCT (nothing warmer than 4K right now), but as others may have suggested, I think one must probably have fairly high CRI to go with that to start getting comparable to that 'look' of incan that some seek. It also seems likely that a HCRI LED w/ a high 'R9' is an important factor as well. I recently picked up 2 lights to 'experiment' with using - both @4000K w/ HCRI, but one with much higher 'R9', and I think I can appreciate the difference. I don't know - I'm just an ol' sparky guy, not a 'light' guy, but others 'round here know a lot more about visible light than I do. I'm just a rank amateur photographer, and when I use an optical spectrum analyzer, it ain't for visible light - mostly C-Band DWDM. Others can comment better about the R9 thing, but some of them may not be reading the incan section

My camera sensors play nice with a cool beam. Not the icey blue kind but the ones that run say between 5700 and 6200 like the CREE produce. Now in some cases using a warmer LED can produce a photo that invokes a warm, nostalgic, almost sepia appearance like from the late 19th century. But for fill light I definitely prefer the results provided by the cool end of the spectrum. Intensity matters more than the tint at those times though as you probably know when dialing in a flash module.
A few years back I used a Fuji film can with the bottom cut out and slid over the flash. It really helped reduce the overwhelming amout of light a point and shoot flash put out. Then I discovered Gary Fong products. Then one day I was snapping photos of bees on flowers and whipped out a small flashlight with a cool white beam and used it to even light out when in a not so ideal position where the angle of the sunlight was causing issues.

Many speak R9 value making or breaking the good CRI value, but I've always preferred to look at the R13 (fleshtone) as the important one. Too much R9 (in my view) can overwhelm the R13 and cause an almost "fake tan" look, especially when people are the subject. But at 2am I definitely prefer a nice warm beam regardless of what the numbers are.

 

[badtziscool]

Although I could be wrong, I would guess that the Nichia was the bottom pic.

Although the 219b should be better than my 219c, the box with colors I flashed with the Brinkmann vs TK18 exhibited a similar reduction in color contrast as the "fall soccer sign up" advertisement on the bottom pic... particularly in the upper right quadrant near the pink and yellow marker caps.

You could be right about that. I honestly don't remember which pic is which. The only reason I think the first one is the P60 and second one is the 219b is because of the beam pattern. The P60 has a narrower beam pattern than the Maratac pen light and from what I can tell, the first pic has the narrower beam. But like I mentioned, this is from an iPhone 11 Pro Max and taking pics from a camera phone for tint comparisons definitely presents problems. But it is good enough to show how close they are.

 

[greenpondmike]

And that old viewpoint makes zero sense to me since there are so many rechargeable options for incan lights, and lithium primaries are not very expensive these days and haven't been expensive for a long time.

That's right- it is an old but also obsolete viewpoint. I've already corrected that in my previous post.