Which Tint for following blood trail?

[tomp]

Sometimes I need to follow a blood trail in the dark (deer hunting). I have noticed that the LED lights make it harder to distinguish the blood color red. I am not very knowledgable about these high end LED lights, but trying to learn. When using an LED light and I am finding it harder to see blood with these LED lights versus Incan lights, is it because I have the wrong tint? If so, which type tint should I be using to best detect the blood? Thank you for your help here guys, very much appreciated

 

[Nitroz]

A royal blue LED will make blood turn very dark, or black anywhere that there is blood.

 

[alpg88]

Sometimes I need to follow a blood trail in the dark (deer hunting). I have noticed that the LED lights make it harder to distinguish the blood color red. I am not very knowledgable about these high end LED lights, but trying to learn. When using an LED light and I am finding it harder to see blood with these LED lights versus Incan lights, is it because I have the wrong tint? If so, which type tint should I be using to best detect the blood? Thank you for your help here guys, very much appreciated

try warm leds with high cri number, 100 being the highest, but no leds have cri of incandesent, you really want hotwire for hunting, many hunters i know stopped using led lights soon after they tried it. buld yourself rop or mag85, and you'll never miss blood trail cuz you couldn't see it. (if it is there in the first place, that is.)

 

[VidPro]

its because there aint no red in them well almost.
some mods have put a "added" red as a seperate actual red led item, into a light to vastly improve on the limited red spectrum, we have the same problem when wanting to use them for video.
visually it doesnt look like it is missing so badly, so i dont think they (the industry) will use a lot of time trying to correct for that.
i have done some RGB lights, and the difference even visually on everything is completly different, even vrses the warms. problem is RGB mostly isnt using phosphors to have the extra juice out of the diode . so the lumen numbers for the power in is not pretty on paper, but it is really pretty in real life
it can take 2-3 times the power to drive non-phoshor RGB to the same visual appearnce of the phosphor whites. so there goes the big led advantage, another reason why there are far less RGB lights out there, at that pont incan starts looking better than led :-(

even IF you can put a circle of red (not orangy red) 5mm leds around your main item, you can turn the red back on, there is no red in my cheapo LED tv either, but I can still see red in it almost

even if you have a simple reflector, you can put 5mm holes around the reflector, use spotty red 5mm leds which have terrible beam patterns, you could "fix" it cheaply and easily on a LOT of things. just use a lot of them, they will blend together, and driving some red to patch up what is missing, should be easy, because your not having to provide all the light, just the patch.
if you have multiple led light item, try and stuff a red in place of ONE of the whites, or in between them or anything, just shove it in anywhere, the drive VOLTAGE on the reds is completly different, so there is some conciderations, but in series with current control driver thing, it should be easy.

by patching in some red , you still have the huge advantages of the phosphor driven "white" leds and its efficency, and get the best of both worlds, without requiring 2-3times more battery to do RGB or Incan.

 

[kyhunter1]

I prefer my game to be DRT "dead right there", but unfortunately that is not always the case.... If your light must be a led, then warm tints are better for color rendering period. If you are into nice beams, and customizing lights, then you have alot of options. A surefire 6P with a Malkoff or Nailbender module would not hurt your wallet too bad. Otherwise, there are some decent lights already on the market for this. Primos makes some dedicated tracking lights that are suppose to be more than just moderately effective. Price wise, they would likely be the best option.

 

[Patriot]

If you don't mind straying from LED, the old Surefire A2, which is also regulated, makes a good, pocket stow-able blood tracking light. I haven't found an LED yet that works quite as well as an incan for blood tracking.

 

[flashflood]

OJ, is that you? Still trying to find the real killer?

 

[lightguy7]

A cheap option might be a blue filter that covers the lens. I think Surefire makes blue filters and maybe Browning also markets blue lights.

 

[ganymede]

How about UV light?

 

[BoarHunter]

How about UV light?

UV doesn't work with blood !!!

There exists special purpose flashligts for this, they use pulsating red led with regular white. The idea is the red LED will enhance the perception of the blood while the white will let you see the suroundings.

 

[DaveyJones]

How about UV light?

what you see in the movies is a combination of a UV light + a chemical that reacts to blood sprayed around the place.
a UV light on its own will have the opposite effect.
ive seen it used in public toilets to make it hard for junkies to find their vein, and discourage them from shooting up in them. (libraries can be a rough place )

a pulsating red/white light wouldnt work either.
red light does not enhance the visbility of blood, it does quite the opposite;
make the surrounding areas red, destroying contrast between blood and other objects.

mixing light colors is very different from mixing solid colors like paints.
maybe this helps:

as u can see red+green=yellow,
and as stated above, LED's dont have allot of red in them, and so u get results like the greenish tint of the s2's

A royal blue LED will make blood turn very dark, or black anywhere that there is blood.

this would work well in the snow, but in non frozen landscapes would prolly be something to avoid.
see the thing that makes red solid appear black under blue light, is the fact that it is reflecting a minimum of light.

LED's do have allot of blue in them aswell, like the nichia has a color that tends towards magenta.

incandescants work well because they have a yellow tint.
that means red for reflecting the red solid, and green for contrast.
blue is not needed, it will only reflect things that are not red.

perhaps a yellow filter would work?
guys?

 

[Pacecar]

I've heard it said that incandescants work well, but the old style Coleman gas-fired lantern works even better.