LED COLOR RENDITION RANT

[FASTCAR]

Well yet again folks I must rant.
After the 11 zillionth time of hearing about LEDs distorting color..I had to test it.

My gal is an artist ( and models for JC pennies in sunday paper).
She has this color chart on a large..maybee 2 foot by 3foot thick paper.


Went into the woods lastnight with 2 incans and 3 LEDs.Put chart roughly eye level on a fence in pitch black.Was about 20' away. First I used a M*g Ch*rger incan. Of 20 colors I tried to I.D. I got 18 right..seems I have no clue what a "burnt cianna" or "muave" ( spelling ??) is.Same with a Wolf Eyes 13v.

Next was my Wolf Eyes 6A /cree/diffused.Got 18 of 20 again. Same with T5 and Wolf Wyes 9A/cree/D36 .

Again perhaps I am superman..or all those carrots really help.

I really dont get what all the fuss is about from the DIE HARD incan guys.
I must admit, if I use an incan for a few mins..then swap to a LED....for 3 seconds things look odd.That said, If I use a LED for a while then swap to an incan..it also looks odd for 3 sec. And personally I slightly perfer the LED for what ever reason.

100% for sure LED or incan..if its dark and I put a light on :I can tell black from white..blue from red and so on.

IMO any incan puts a slight tint on colors as well.And after any incan is on for more then 30 sec and starts to yellow..things get worse.No less for 15 or 20 or 30 mins.

***Nicole and I did our walk and tested again with a now nearly dead MC and Wolf Eyes 13v.With both incans VERY yellow , all colors seemed VERY distorted.LEDs was 100% the same still.


I think I will make a site called CPF myth buster:

Led bad color rendition : Busted
Night adapted vision : Busted
No cree can flood : Busted
Surefire best ever : Busted

**legal notes : Fastcar is not picking on any 1 person.Fastcar is not "PC".
Please do not flame.I call it as I see it. As always this is all "I.M.O."

My 2 cents

 

[WadeF]

I haven't had any problems with the LED's. The only thing I notice is when I shine a LED on my kid's while they are asleep and it makes them look like they are dead. Makes them pale, lips purple, etc. This is from a distance of about 10-12 feet. Other than that I haven't noticed any problems.

 

[qip]

i think its more of a problem with leds with blue tint , but with the good white tints nowadays color rendition is not bad at all

 

[Max]

I did this test a few years ago:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=74775#post74775

Two photos of the same flower, camera on manual white balance.
Incandescent on left, 1W Luxeon on right.

 

[FASTCAR]

You must have had a "blue" lux.My LEDs are nothing like that

 

[KROMATICS]

Let's see some pictures from this test so we can see for ourselves. It's not about being able to tell red from green. If that's the case it's not flashlights you should be testing! With incandescents you have to deal with color temperature. With LEDs you have to deal with color temperature, color rendering and tint.

Sitting here I am illuminating a red Maglite I have with various LED lights which show the color to be deep red... no wait... make that orange-red... no.... purple-red. Whoops. It looks different for each LED light I try. Which is the correct one? Illuminating it with my A2 shows it to be between the deep red and orange red. Taking it outside in the early afternoon sun it looks the same. Similarly if I am wearing a shirt that is labeled as sandstone that looks like a light sand color both in the sun and under incandescents but looks mint green under LED lighting you know which one is not accurate.

As a test just hang a bunch of different colored shirts on a clothesline out in the sun. You know what they are supposed to look like. Now look at them with different lighting sources at night. While some incandescents have a yellow tint I have found they always do a much better job at accurately rendering colors.

 

[jtr1962]

As a test just hang a bunch of different colored shirts on a clothesline out in the sun. You know what they are supposed to look like. Now look at them with different lighting sources at night. While some incandescents have a yellow tint I have found they always do a much better job at accurately rendering colors.

Unless you're trying to tell dark green, navy blue, deep violet, or black apart, in which case they all look close to black under incandescent lighting (unless it's extremely bright). My mom had exactly this problem with the stupid incandescent chandelier in her bedroom. She took the clothes into the kitchen with nice full-spectrum fluorescent. The true colors jumped out. Even with her new relatively dim LED closet lights she can pick out the colors. I can't wait to until we have LEDs to replace those awful sickly yellow small base incandescents. IMHO they aren't much better than sodium vapor streetlights.

 

[mchlwise]

VERY interesting test.

:twothumbs

I've never had problems with color rendition of LEDs either, and I actually prefer how light from my LEDs looks over light from any incan I've ever handled, including my Surefire.

 

[Art Vandelay]

The Color Rendering Index (CRI) can only be used to compare lights with the same color temperature.

 

[curtis22]

Sitting here I am illuminating a red Maglite I have with various LED lights which show the color to be deep red... no wait... make that orange-red... no.... purple-red. Whoops. It looks different for each LED light I try. Which is the correct one? Illuminating it with my A2 shows it to be between the deep red and orange red. Taking it outside in the early afternoon sun it looks the same. Similarly if I am wearing a shirt that is labeled as sandstone that looks like a light sand color both in the sun and under incandescents but looks mint green under LED lighting you know which one is not accurate.

I don't think there is any such thing as "correct" color.

 

[FASTCAR]

I am with you curtis ! :twothumbs

 

[kelmo]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To me LED light washes out green and brown backgrounds (outdoors). There are plenty of photons hitting the objective but it just takes longer to recognize what I'm illuminating. Please also note that I now need to wear reading glasses. So you younger photon fiends maybe less prone to this phenomenon. I also think the yellowing of the incan beam as the batteries die is pleasing. It reminds me of the days when there were only PR bulbs and zinc carbide batteries for the masses. Anybody remember "Never Ready" batteries? The cat jumping through the 9?

As stated ad nauseum, LEDs are good indoors and incans are good outdoors.

When out in the woods give me an E2e with an MN02 anytime.

And you will never catch me without my Arc AAA-P in my pocket.

Sorry to ramble, its Friday night and I've had a few cocktails...

 

[Hodsta]

In my humble opinion the warm white Seouls give a great clour rendition, happily in the middle of blue white Luxions and Yellow white P60s.

It's a difficult topic to uniformly measure - in my smal collection there is an extreme difference between the pretty much wholly blue light of my early Arc LSL LED and the very yellow of stock mag incans or even my e2 exec.

It would be interesting to see a test between the best in class LEDs and bulbs of equivilent brightness/reflector/modernity.

 

[chesterqw]

it doesn't matter what light source you are using.

what matter is what light the item reflects and what it absorbs.

 

[KingGlamis]

The great part about being a Flashaholic is carrying both incan and LED lights so you can play with both. Depending on the situation, use the light that YOU PREFER. Problem solved. :twothumbs

 

[Bullzeyebill]

At night, using an incan leaves, grass, trees, etc. are over emphasized. Noon time light will render them about the same as a 5,000-6,000K led light at night. It is not that incan lights shows better color rendition at night but that incan light seems to be more visible to us, and we can see better. I do know that for me it takes more led lumens than incan lumens to see objects at a distance at night.

 

[bspofford]

I can't agree more! The human eye and brain are amazingly adaptable. So much so that we need light meters to judge film exposure and also need to calibrate computer screen color to get it right. When film cameras were the only option, you could use tungsten film with incan light, daylight film for outside and other special films to correct for fluorescent lighting. All this was necessary because out eyes could move from daylight to incan to fluorescent lighting without noticing much difference. I myself tend to notice LED tint mostly when doing side-by-side comparisons on a white wall. In actual use, my eyes and brain do a lot of adapting, and I don't see dramatic differences.

 

[2xTrinity]

I find that comparing my best LEDs to my best incandescent lamps (read: warmest LED vs "coolest" incan), the incandescent is generally preferable outdoors, but the best result in terms of color rendition comes from running BOTH simultaneously. LEDs tend to be weak in red, strong in blue. Incandescents on the other hand are strong in red, and weak in blue -- the combination of both is perfect.

The best lighting I've seen outdoors is neither LED nor incandescent -- it's metal halide lamps at 4200K designed specifically for good color rendition.

 

[lamperich]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To me LED light washes out green and brown backgrounds (outdoors). There are plenty of photons hitting the objective but it just takes longer to recognize what I'm illuminating. Please also note that I now need to wear reading glasses. So you younger photon fiends maybe less prone to this phenomenon. .

yes we old guys...
no iam twenty 5

with my 2 Luxeon torchs i also suffers under this phenomen. both tend to be yellow tinted and i have to look twice to say for sure that´s green grass and thats mud.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=164966
the Mag5D is the reference.

source: cree datasheet.

i think/hope the neutral white will perform better.


my xnova 8 2aa and most of my cheapo key chain perform like this.

that picture is the arc aaa...
i think every one knowns how the pink LPT port really looks like..

 

[wintermute]

I don't think there is any such thing as "correct" color.

I think that a "correct" color rendition would be one which looked the same under the light source as it would from sunlight. Sunlight has been our reference point for color for more then 400,000 years. So whatever light source can render colors to look the same as they look in the sun would be the optimum source.