How bad is tint or rings for a light?

I see this all the time, so figured I would ask. I do know that LED's have different bins (WH, etc etc). I often see threads, of people complaining about the tint being too green or rose colored etc etc. How does this impact light usage, say indoors or out(I do consider "white walling" usage)? I have a few LED's, nothing so out of whack so perhaps I can't relate.

Also lastly people hate rings in the beam. It's a known thing SMO reflectors and Q5(or CREE's in general?) cause this. I have never found or even noticed the ring to be a problem during light usuage.

So do I not notice it, or are people mainly in search of a "white wall" light? I won't lie, but I tend to use all my lights and I never do the white wall test, I just test outdoors in my backyard. Even the Rayovac 3C CREE people thought was purple, got the job done outdoors...

It's not, just some people don't like them.

Depending on how bad the tinting is, it could affect real world use.

Same with rings and holes.

For me, as long as the tint isn't horrendous and the artifacts aren't distracting, then the light would work fine for me.

Most of these "problems" are visible when whit wall hunting, which I don't consider real world use.

Out of the current gen LEDs, the one with the least rings seem to be the Seoul P4, followed by the Luxeon Rebel, and TFFC K2.

Oh ok cool thanks guys! I figured it might be an individual liking or preference, but always wondered as I see new threads on it.

With some lights the rings are really disturbing! they make you see things different. Some of the early cree Fenix had this, atleast mine had.

I could clearly see the rings outside! first the hotspot then darkness then yellow ring then slightly darkness and then spillbeam. Most crees I have now arent that bad, but i do see the rings. And since I know they are there they are bugging me, but in most cases you concentrate on the hotspot so its not such a big problem.

Most crees i have seen dosnt have a "surefire beam", they dont have that beautiful transition from hotspot to spill beam that the luxeons have.

If I was to choose a tactical light I would not have gone with a cree light that had those cree rings. I still would have choose either a incan or a luxeon!

Rings and artifacts causes you to see whats not there or mistaken something nonexistent to be something real. Unlike incandescent where artifacts, if existed, is usually quite profound...LEDs typically don't create so much artifacts that it becomes detracting, unless your surrounded by white walls of course :nana:

as far as tint goes, I think its really user preference . Back in the day when Luxeons are still on the tip of everyone's tongues its generally recognized that X0, V0, W0 bins are considered "winning the lottery" for being the whitest. But out doors you really don't see much difference. I read somewhere that greener tints are better than white in the outdoors, but I have yet to discover a convincing testimony to prove it one way or another.

almost every light that uses TIR optics will cast a few rings here and there. as long as they are perfectly uniform/coaxial to the hotspot it doesn't bother me

After years of using a standard incan mag any ring a cree can produce doesnt me.

I think the white wall has its place as kind of a standard device for measuring the "perfection" of a light's beam. We all can find one, and so can the manufacturers. And face it, we all prefer a pretty beam.

Geoff

To most who are not as passionate about lights as we are, tint and beam artifacts are no big deal.

For some who work with lights on a regular basis, I'm sure that the better color rendition of the more neutral tints can make a slight difference in a multi-colored environment.

Most of my friends who are in law enforcement or the the fire department prefer a defect free beam, but tint is not that important. Paramedics like good color rendition to help identify subtle differences in colors.

To me, tint is more important than having an artifact-free beam. I have issues using bluish tinted and my depth perception on dark colored backgrounds. Given lights with equal output, I'd go for the light with defects in the beam over the one with a tint my eyes can't handle well.

Aside from tint or rings, personally I find donuts the most annoying...I mean gee, you need illumination on point A so you direct your light that way...but you would needto point your light to point B next to point A in order to illuminate point A correctly. Aside from LuxV and a couple other multi-emitter diodes, I don't think you'll see this very often

BigHonu said:

To me, tint is more important than having an artifact-free beam. I have issues using bluish tinted and my depth perception on dark colored backgrounds. Given lights with equal output, I'd go for the light with defects in the beam over the one with a tint my eyes can't handle well.

Click to expand...

I've never thought of it from this standpoint, which brings up a good point especially if your color blind and the light you are using just happen to mask the color in question

here is color blind?

I use flashlights for inspecting quality defects at work, the Fenix Q5 rings make these flashlights unesable for me