Incandescent vs LED ?

[besafe2]

Pros & cons ?
Having trouble making up my mind.

 

[ACMarina]

For what purpose? There are lots of situations that would one or the other..

 

[Gunner12]

Major differences:

Incan: Can have more total light output, Better color rendition

LED: Tougher, Lasts longer, More efficient

HID: Total output, good efficiency, Tougher then incandescent

Depending on situation, one might be better then another.

 

[Strauss]

Not to be rude, but the search button is your friend. This exact topic has been debated many times before, with a few recent and LONG threads on this topic

 

[alberto]

Major differences:

Incan: Can have more total light output, Better color rendition

LED: Tougher, Lasts longer, More efficient

HID: Total output, good efficiency, Tougher then incandescent

Depending on situation, one might be better then another.

I agree but will take exception on the comment about color rendition. Incans create a yellow hue while LEDs (the good ones, driven properly) produce an almost pure white light that renders colors correctly.

 

[Alteran]

Actually, even though they can look perfectly white, LEDs are usually deficient in many colours. "White" LEDs strike a balance between blue and yellow by using a blue die and yellow phosphor. Incans have a broad-spectrum light, even if it has more yellow light than other colours.

 

[FlashKat]

The short answer is to buy both. Buy a inexpensive LED light and buy Wolf Eyes for the incandescent. There is a use for both.

Not to be rude, but the search button is your friend. This exact topic has been debated many times before, with a few recent and LONG threads on this topic

 

[yellow]

as long as the light is still pocketable, the Cree/SSC light eats anything else

 

[mdocod]

I agree but will take exception on the comment about color rendition. Incans create a yellow hue while LEDs (the good ones, driven properly) produce an almost pure white light that renders colors correctly.

sorry, this is incorrect in most cases....

observe..

 

[Learjet]

Just to add to the colour ballance of incan vrs LED discussion, I just took some shots of different lights to see the difference.

All lights were diffused by wrapping an A4 piece of white paper over the lens. The colour ballance of the camera was manually set and fixed to "daylight" so all frames are relative to each other.

The first frame only was with the fluro room light on and the camera's setting set to daylight also.
The incan was a 6V lantern type. Oh look the blue is all gone.

Conclusion, most Ebay lights suck but my Fenix P2D is closer to normal daylight colour ballance than the other lights.

Edit, The MXDL is not a true Luxeon but a Chinese clone.

 

[Long John]

:goodjob: Learjet

Your Fenix is the clear winner:twothumbs

Mostly, the debate about color rendition Led/incan is a question of personally taste and the perception of individual eyes. Everybody has different perceptions about the color tints so......endless discussions.

I prefer a well balanced Led-light. Well to observe at these pictures are the different tints of the Led's, my personal winner there is the Trilux at the 3. picture:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=160783

Best regards

_____
Tom

 

[TORCH_BOY]

Both are pretty good, unlike bulbs Leds have the advantage of not blowing when you need them most

 

[SilverFox]

Hello Learjet,

Would you happen to have a daylight lit sample that you could include for comparison?

Good luck picking "standard" daylight...

Tom

 

[Learjet]

I'll see what I can do tomorrow after sun up. Daylight colour ballance is usually considered to be direct sunlight at high elevation. Shade, cloudy or low sun elevation is not.

 

[js]

Please check out this thread:

What is the point for incandescent?

It is pretty much the most complete discussion of this topic to date, and includes links to the older discussions.

This subject comes up at least once every three months. There are literally dozens of threads on this subject.

Didn't a search yield any results?

Anyway, check out the link. Good stuff there, and good links within that thread.

 

[IMSabbel]

sorry, this is incorrect in most cases....

observe..

Try your digicam in "daylight" white balancing mode instead of automatic (== adjust for sick yellow pisslight), and you will get different results.

 

[mdocod]

when looking a the VW and the camper, the incandecent clearly shows the colors of the objects, the LED masks the color under it's own tint heavily. that has been my observation in use, and the camera shows what I see....

Setting the camera to "daylight" white balance isn't an accurate way to represent the way the eye works with various light sources. Eyes automatically adjust for white-point on the fly. If you set a camera to 1 point, then the results will be even less applicable to the way the eye would see the same condition. The same is true for trying to compare brightness of different flashlights by setting the camera to the same exposure time, while it does accurately tell which light is brighter, it does not account for the eyes ability to adjust for a much wider range of intensity. Whitepoint and CRI are 2 very different things.

With that said, I will see if my camera even has that setting (I don't think it has any manual control over white balance, it's just an old kodak easyshare DX 6340) I would be interested in seeing the results..

Learjets post of the color charts clearly shows that whatever light you choose that has it's peak output closest to the cameras whitebalance setting will win, it does not show which will render colors better for the eyeball. If you changed the camera white balance to match the peak output of each light source, then retake the pictures, then you will see that the incandecent will render the various colors in the chart with more brilliance, this is how the eye would adjust and see things.

 

[mdocod]

I just found it... I can change simple white balance.. 3 choices, daylight, tungsten, florescent. (and of course auto)... I'll play with it and see what I get.

 

[Learjet]

The pics are in. In the first image camera is set to "daylight". Straight daylight shot then the Fenix P2D indoors. The Fenix is very close, just slightly blue shifted.

For the second image I picked another Incan, the whitest one I could find. To my eye this light looked white, until I shone the Fenix near it. It's quite yellow by comparison. Then I set the camera to "auto" from the "daylight" setting to simulate our eyes. It did a pretty good job and is also probably close to daylight.

The multicolour car is from a book. All frames except the last were with the camera set to "daylight". For the last the camera was set to auto to compensate for the yellow Incan.

Well according to my camera the Fenix P2D is the closest thing to having a small piece of daylight in your hand to shine at night. Unlike some claims that the light does not carry the full spectrum, the Fenix does, otherwise some colours in the photos would be very dull. Well red is darkened a little. It is ever so slightly biased to blue also.

The Incan is nowhere near daylight colour ballance. It has a significant yellow shift and lacks blue. It is the incan that does not carry a ballanced full spectrum! This is the very thing that makes incans so good with contrast! Incans are like blue blocker sunglasses and yellow shooting glasses. If "daylight" was more yellow we would see a whole lot better! Our eyes prefer yellow. I see better at night with yellow street lights than white ones.

As people have said before, for short to medium range use LED. For long range use something yellow.

 

[bfg9000]

Unlike some claims that the light does not carry the full spectrum, the Fenix does, otherwise some colours in the photos would be very dull.

Just goes to show that camera CCDs can be fooled as easily as our eyes, because LEDs only have peaks across the full spectrum.

Yes it is true that incan rolls off at high frequencies to lack blue despite a CRI of 100. A perfect light for our eyes would be able to produce a flat curve (high CRI) to past 5,000k, which cannot be done with tungsten (note that the CRI only uses eight samples so future light sources that even produce only eight peaks should be able to have high CRI). For now, both are imperfect light sources.

The problem is that everybody's eyes are different, and may have varying sensitivities to certain frequencies, so lights that only produce peaks of R,G, and B will look different to different people. They also won't look the same to different brands/models of CCDs in digital cameras.