Enzo Morocioli said:
My friend and I will be getting some of those tonight. Sit tight.
Whoops! I'm Enzo's lazy friend in question. I haven't spent much time around here the last few days, but I've got our beamshots uploaded. There's just one problem... I'm a dummy. Halfway through taking the shots, I said, "we should be taking notes to keep everything straight," and then I failed to act on my own advice, thus guaranteeing that I would have trouble getting it all straightened out later. Also, we tried to get some color shots, but I didn't think to let the camera auto-expose them to equalize brightness, so I just kept on with the manual exposures like I'd used for the wall shots. And we were in a rush and had some trouble maintaining aiming consistency too, so some of the shots just didn't work and I didn't notice until I reviewed them later. I later tried to make up for that by doing some more color shots on my own using Enzo's 140Cn, my 140Cgt, my Inova T1-K2TFFC (my former best led tint), and my Malkoff M60WL (my new best led tint); these came out ok, but I had to toss some of the Cgt shots because for some reason they just did not come out the way I saw them in person, making it look inferior to the Cn. For those shots, please keep in mind that my M60WL is significantly warmer than the wwCn, though their rendering qualities are still quite similar. So, overall, I'm very disappointed in how the shots came out and I don't think they show much that will really be helpful. However, since Enzo did promise them, here's the link to the beamshots folder, so you all may take whatever you can from them, with a grain of salt:
http://picasaweb.google.com/saturnnyne/ClickyBeamshots#
Also, the wall shots aren't good for giving an idea of tint, the wall is actually slightly blue; the Cgt is fairly accurately showing the color of the wall, it's not actually ghastly blue compared to the other lights, as it sometimes appears here.
Enzo Morocioli said:
Ok... Guys, I recieved my Ra-100WW-CN from HDS today.... and....
It's... the flashlight I've been waiting for my whole life.
. . . The color rendering is great. It does seem golden when shone on a white wall, but when you look at anything with color and texture, it looks so much more natural.
I got to try out Enzo's light on our quick beamshot night... and I don't know what more I can say to tell you how impressed I was. As he said, the light it emits truly is just beautiful; golden, soothing, comfortable on the eyes, vibrant colors, good throw... Despite the lower output, I felt that it didn't give up too much spotting ability simply because (to both our eyes) it rendered the target with such improved definition. I don't recall if we did a direct throw comparison against his Cn, but I can say that the wwCn at 100 gave a better view at a distance than my Cgt at 140. This is, of course, to be expected, since the narrow beam would give it a very slight advantage despite a step lower output according to my calculations. However, the difference was more dramatic than a difference in quantity, the tint just allowed it to function better for us. I have to admit, seeing the WW left me feeling a little unsatisfied with my own GT. As much as I love the practicality of the wide beam and the amazing runtime, I'm not sure I'll be able to resist getting a wwCn now that I've seen what it can do.
Enzo Morocioli said:
Outdoors, this thing is a beauty. Let me show you a picture.
Those pictures do show a bit of the difference, you can kind of see the improved color distinction with the warm emitter, but I've seen the light in person and I think the photos don't really do the effect justice. I wish we'd had more time to take some outdoor shots with the various lights, find a way to really give an idea how nice it looks.
Out of interest, has anybody calculated how long you can run the light on burst, with continuous 10 second uses, before a primary would be unable to power the burst feature?
I haven't tried it with a primary, but I did run through an RCR on burst. I wasn't really watching the time closely since I was really just trying to get the light heated up to see if it would have an effect on the flickering at low levels, but I got roughly 30 minutes of bursting on a 900mah BS RCR (it should be noted that I've found this cell to perform no better than my 750mah AWs, despite claim of additional capacity).
I wonder if it's possible to add some type of tint or filter cover on the 140cn and produce a similar beam to the 100ww-cn. Even if you lose ~40 lumens from the filter to get the same effect, it would still be good.
I don't think much good can be done with a subtractive method. Either the cool emitters just won't have enough red to give the appearance of the warms (seriously, the amount of red content is striking) or (if possible, I don't really know), in order to balance the spectrum similarly by keeping whatever red it does have and dropping everything else down to the proper balance, you would cut the output to a small fraction of where you started. A 40lm drop is, I think, wildly optimistic. If it did work, I'd think it good to get even 40lm total output remaining.
I could clearly see the eyes reflecting light from the beam of the flashlight. However apart from that i could not tell what it was. Everything looked almost the same colour and the animal appeared to be camouflaged in the foliage of leaves.
Great story, thank you for sharing that! Sounds like a fun adventure. I think that does a good job of illustrating exactly the problem I have with cool tints, the way they tend to blend everything together in a greyish haze, allowing the target to easily camouflage in with the surroundings. However, I think there is also another effect at work there: not only was the other light an incan, it was also lighting the target from a point much farther away from you. Through positioning of the light, I am able to replicate your experience using only one light. When I'm out walking in a large open field and I want to check on the moving shapes at the edge of my walking lights reach, I'll pull out a spotting light, usually in a tactical grip and held near my face, and try for a better look. Sometimes, especially at short distances, this is fine. Sometimes, all I see is a pair of eyes reflecting in a haze, but if I move the light as far from being aligned with my eyes as possible by holding it at arms length, suddenly I can see that it's a deer. I'm not sure exactly how much of a role the environment plays in this, so possibly it was less of a factor for you, but it's definitely significant in my ocean-misty atmosphere, and the more moisture in the air the more necessary it is to pick the right angle of illumination.
This effect can also be taken advantage of in the opposite way. When I'm not trying to get a better look at a known target but instead scanning for potential threats, I align the light directly with my eyes to maximize the range at which I can catch eye reflections. A dramatic example of this is when lighting the eyes of certain spiders; you can hardly see them when holding a light normally, but with it aligned properly you can see them shining like diamonds at 50 feet.
Finally got around to taking a couple beamshots of my 100WWCn Clicky. . . The tint was best described by Enzo as "golden" on the Clicky...it's absolutely gorgeous. Color redention I'd say is at least 90% as good as the Nichia 083....which to my eyes appears perfect. Like Enzo, I have found the EDC of my dreams, and have been searching 2.5yrs for a light like this.
Nice job on those shots, they do a good job of showing how much richer the warm tones are on the WW. I don't have much experience with the 083, but I've seen Enzo's 083 D10 and previously compared it to some of my lights. I can't really say anything definite without having done a direct comparison, but I agree that the color rendition of these warm emitters seems to leave little to be desired even when compared against the current best. As I told Enzo when I saw it, the warm tint just looks "natural and right." Though I love my Cgt for many things, I fear my priorities at this stage of the game bring the wwCn closer to being my ideal edc.
And as for the clip, I highly recommend the Arc4 clip that's been mentioned in the clip thread. A bit of filing to get it to fit and it works great!
Cgt...58R...93P
Cn....59R...92P
C.....58R...95P
How interesting that your runtimes were all so similar between the different models, despite the trend we've seen toward significant differences between them. I'm going to go ahead and conclude then that Clicky runtimes have more to do with the strength of their owner's spirit than anything else, rather like Link's master sword.
BTW, I was one of the first recipients of the clicky (from UT)...
It's handsfull, get him!
Mate, you have no idea how worked up you got luxlover. Your Clicky was one of the very first to ship out, so when you didn't reappear to confirm receipt of it in a timely fashion, he was just about ready to lead a search party to see what had befallen you. Anyway, good to see you came back, stop by my Clicky serial registry if you're so inclined.
Just finished filing my Arc clip.....
Sorry for the crappy Blackberry pic.
But I just love this clip, feels just right
I'm right with you there! I just got my Arc clip filed and mounted, and what a difference! My light feels complete now, it has a clip that works perfectly and doesn't interfere with use, just what I was expecting to receive with the light originally. :thumbsup:
The Clicky runtimes are purely mind blowing. Averaging high 80's to mid 90's for all models on primary except WWCN, and mid to upper 60's for recargeable. Not bad eh?
