Tint Perception....

After reading a thread just now involving a certain light and tint issues I noticed some members saw the same photo as white tint where some saw it as creamy. I also notice the same thing in many other threads with various lights.

I know eyes are more sensitive to certain colors (green) due to rods and cones in the eyes. I am curious if some people may be simply seeing something different other than certain colors. The usual argument is one certain emitter is more cool where others are warm. I have a light I use on duty at times and to me it is pure white tint. I have several co-workers that say it looks blue where others swear it is brownish in color.

Now again I can understand where some people could all agree that a green light will "look" brighter than red even if it is actually dimmer. I am now curious if tint arguments are sometimes a result of different peoples eyes rather than the actual emitter....you know like my eyes are more programmed to see a whiter tint rather than blue or yellow.

Is it possible for some people to be more sensitive to variations in tint rather than variations in actual different colors? I understand that some people are truly color blind however what about color sensitive?

Just curious and I appreciate others thoughts on this as tint is often a heated issue around here at times. I also do not wish this thread to become a heated debate over any certain emitter or tint but more so a reason as to why some see different tints when looking at the same beamshot.

There is no debate about the fact that we are all different and perceive all stimuli (including colors) differently. I wear glasses and have bad tinitus (the result of target shooting without ear protection and playing in a rock band when in high school). It is interesting that I have difficulty with soft spoken folks but I can hear softly palyed music better than most. The same with color perception. I have two HDS EDCs, one a GT and other, a "non-GT". I see the GT model as being much "warmer" yet it is supposed to be closer to the definition of white than the other. I PREFER the non-GT model believe it or not!

I guess I have to say that scientific measurement may give us a standard from which to compare but, in the end, it is how it appears to ourselves which really matters.


Karl

I'd add that pictures on a computer screen will vary depending upon the display type and color settings. If you've ever used multi monitors it drives you bonkers if they can't match up colors between screens.

I do understand that there is often variations between luxeons of the same BIN code. I am now starting to think that the luxeon lottery may apply just as much to peoples eyes as well as to each luxeon.

I was shocked when I first became interested in lights to see how different each light looked when compared to other luxeons. One light I thought to be pure white would look brown when compared together with another. As soon as I removed the other light the white tint actually did look white again.

I now understand that tint is easily viewed differently when compared to other tints making it easy to see the variations. What confuses me is when using one single source with no comparisons that many will see white where some see bluish or brown tones.

Phantom you may be on to something there. Maybe many of the debates regarding tint are due to monitors and peoples sensitivity to colors or even the condition of their monitors.

I never thought of that however I was curious about in person results. I have compared the light I mentioned earlier (the one I use at work) to others and to my eyes it is crystal white when compared. In real life usage other co-workers say it looks too blue or even brown. I wonder as to why they see it so differently in real life.

There are two "components" to a tint - temperature and, well, tint.

The temperature tells you where you currently are in the scale of the black body ideal (going from red, through orange and yellow, through white and into blue). The tint is the offset into yellow and purple from that ideal black body spectrum.

The first problem here is, some people are more sensitive to shifts in temperature, while others are more sensitive to shifts in tint (or, rather, bothered by them). The second problem is, tint shift doesn't work the same way throughout the whole temperature scale! It's easiest to shift into green or purple from the neutral white* (6500K). The colder or warmer you go from neutral white*, the harder it gets to shift noticeably into green or purple hues. Take a look:



Then there's the third problem - people not being aware of how good their "built-in auto white balance" is. Both eyes and the brain have an awesome knack for compensating for the weirdest and strongest of color shifts. Don't believe me? Try wearing yellow or red glasses for a while, then take them off and check a light you're SURE you knew what tint it was.

* I'm not talking about the same term of "neutral white" LED manufacturers use. To LED manufacturers, neutral white is 4000-4500K. To CFL manufacturers it's 3500K. Neither of those is truly neutral, but warm. Neutral white should be between 5500K-6500K, which corresponds to the range between noon sunny daylight and overcast sky.

I think color "tint" in the same way as "color rendition".

You can talk color charts, temperature scale, planckain black body, rods and cones and other scientific data, but from my experience, light tint or color are very individual based.

Some people can see a ring of color in a beam, while someone standing next to them cannot see it.

I have gotten three different opinions on the "color" of a beam many times from my in-house testers

I think there is a "window" somewhere in the middle of the tint range, where there will be many different opinions of tint, while on the more extremes of the range, you will tend to get more agreement on colors and tints.

I also think that if you conducted a "test" on tint or color, you would get very different results from the standard public, than you would from us Flashaholics.

I totally agree with the subjectivity on this issue. The one thing I would say, however, is that comparison beamshots are important because they do compensate for our "auto white balance", the monitor and our memories... Of course, cameras often perceive the colors differently than we might, but at least that is a fairly scientific/objective way to present the data.

I am no beamshot expert, but I would say that in the few comparisons I've done (Pelican 7060 vs. Fenix TK11, Ray-O-Vac Sportsman Xtreme vs. Pelican 7060, and most recently the Glo-Toob lithium vs. the standard Glo-Toob, the photos really do a nice job of demonstrating the color differences. With my pretty good camera (Canon Rebel) and fixed settings, I would say that it really does a good job of capturing the relative difference.

Of course, this is all somewhat moot because the "lottery" is still significant enough within the exact same light to render all of this moot; to wit, my creamy white Fenix TK11 which has, by far, the best color/tint of any light I own, may be fairly different than the next serial number...

Oh well... As technology improves, the day may come when the tolerances between pills is minimal. Here's to the future!

Unless you are looking into the light source itself, the tint you perceive is based on the light being reflected off particles in the air or more commonly, objects. The white wall comes to mind but even the white wall is relative and not absolute. Take two paint chips of white and unless they are duplicates of the same paint, you will notice that neither is pure white, relative to the other.

I think this thread is primarily considering the question of shared perceptions; that is agreement on the same tint by word definition anyway, of a perceived tint. There have been a number of similar discussions over the years on CPF. In the past it has been brought up that there are even racial differences in tint and hue perception and examples of how Kodak film and Fuji film once catered to specific markets and how they were less than ideal to certain racial groups due likely to differences in color perception as a genetic trait.

Many will agree that "white" is best achieved by a full spectrum of light and further that a black body source like the sun or incandescent lamp is a good source. That is to say that white is achieved when you are on the plank curve. At that point, tint then is a function of the color temperature of the source as has been mentioned. I suspect that the individual's perception of what color temperature, on the curve, best represents neutral white is subject to the individual and not necessarily the same or shared, among a group of individuals.

Some members discuss how the perceived tints in some of the lights either enhance or diminish the ability to see and perceive objects of various color in the dark or low light conditions.

IMHO, a tint is significant if it is so strong that it overrides ones ability to perceive objects and if it remains obvious while actually looking at objects and targets of interest. In most cases, the tint can be and is filtered out in no time, by the brain when a diverse field of illumination is viewed. In previous threads on the subject, it has been mentioned that peoples eyes tend to yellow over age and someone older is adding a yellow tint or emphasis to that being viewed as a result. This may be why some of us older folks find the higher color temperatures more pleasing or what we would consider to be a truer white.

Back to the trust of the first post, I believe as others have stated that to some degree, we share in a common perception but as you get more specific or approach what we might agree to be "white" we will differ in both actual perception as well as processed perception. If what we see does not meet our concept of white but it is close, we will assign it a "tint" in the sense that it has a bit too much of some color. It may well be that the white is off white not because it has too much of some color but is in fact lacking some other color. We typically don't look at something in terms of what may be missing but in terms of what we perceive to be present. When you look at a spectral graph of a LED source and compare it to a spectrum of the sun or anjy black body source, you see that there are areas where the LED is providing too much, relatively speaking and in other bands, the LED is significantly deficient. In aggregate, these excess and deficiencies result in a perception of tint when the light is reflected off a full spectrum, that is to say white, object, or viewed directly.

Some colors and tints can be defined or replicated by a specific wave length of light whereas other colors such as purple and the all important white, require a mix and blend of various wavelengths to be constructed. If a person is color blind to red, they will never see the purple that others, not blind to red will see. Their perception of white would be different as well unless the white were constructed of a combination of colors which did not include red.

Everything is relative and it comes as no surprise that perception is relative as well. I believe tint perception is relative and dependent on both the source (light itself or object reflecting the light) and the individual's brain used in processing the information received via their eyes. The perception can also be swayed by anticipation and expectation if there are any preconceptions in place.

McGizmo said:

In the past it has been brought up that there are even racial differences in tint and hue perception and examples of how Kodak film and Fuji film once catered to specific markets and how they were less than ideal to certain racial groups due likely to differences in color perception as a genetic trait.

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Not just racial, but cultural too.

Put an American movie next to a European one and the differences in gradation and overall temperature are clear as day. Film stock and different development processes might have been the original reason for that, but the interesting thing is, nowadays, when film gradation is a digital process, the difference is still there. Why? Because different cultures got used to different "looks". Hollywood movies typically look oversaturated and too warm to Europeans. European movies typically look undersaturated and too cold to Americans.

My point is, even with two lights compared under the same conditions, head to head (same reflective surface, same ambient lighting or lack of it, same monitor - if it's a photo of a beamshot) there will still be wildly different opinions and perceptions of what is wrong and what is right.

Even if two people agree one light is more greenish, while the other is more purplish, to one person the greenish one will look "white" and the purplish one purple, while to the other the first one might look green and the second one "white". The third one might say both are tinted.

(That said, black body spectrum isn't just a theoretical mumbo jumbo. We (our eyes and brains) really do have a tendency to call "white" colors that are on that line (or band), so it's much harder to "deviate" individually towards green or purple.)

The only rule of thumb here is - if you see it as white (in your application, under conditions you'll be using it), you're fine and the light is fine.

I know for myself, tint perception has caught me a couple of times.

The first time was earlier this year when I bought a Nite Ize 1 watt drop (Luxeon I) in for a Minimag. The light gave off a pink/purple hue. I contacted Nite Ize because I thought I got a bad drop-in.

Shortly afterwards I bought a Rayovac Sportsman Xtreme 1 watt (Luxeon I again) which to me has a nice soft white tint, similar to my K2 equipped light.

Last night I bought another Rayovac Sportsman Xtreme 1 watt for use in the car. It has a pink/purple hue that is noticeable on a white wall as well as shining it on the carpet. :shrug:

The Luxeon lottery at play?

Now do I keep the light and live with it or exchange it, even though there is nothing really wrong with it other than the tint is not to my satisfaction?

The monitor you are viewing this on is calibrated warm or cool - if you create a perfectly white box in a paint program and view it on a monitor that's right around 3500K, it will look neutral white. But then if you move to a room that has 5000K ambient lighting, returning to the monitor the box will now look like a "warm" or "creamy" white. You can recalibrate the monitor and it'll look white again, until your eyes become adjusted to something else..

I recently bought a flatscreen HD TV, and in its settings it actually has a Warm/Neutral/Cool tint control - it's fun to bias it warm when watching an old movie for that vintage projector look, and then set it cool for a sporting event so the stadium lighting looks authentic.

hey guys... can i add my 2 cents....

every person is color blind to a certain degree... some individuals more than others... and some colors more than others...

the light source doesn't change... it doesn't produce a greener or bluer tint to one person and a perfect white to another...

photos of beamshots on a computer monitor certainly don't hold any truth to the tint... there's so many variables that can change the 'tint' of the beamshot...

tints are more of a relative thing to me... you have 2 sources... put them side by side.. and then you can say one's greener/bluer... whatever.. than the other...

i hope i didn't just repeat what someone else said... in different words

KraZy

+1 on variations in monitors. The differences between one person's monitor and another's can be HUGE! HUGE! This is certainly a big factor in how people comment on the photos they are viewing. Some people run their screens at a high color temp, others a low color temp, etc. Play around with your monitor settings to get an idea of how much variation there can be. Then you have to also factor in people who have older monitors, failing monitors, bad quality monitors, high quality monitors, etc.

The only way we could test differences in people's vision is to all view the same light at the same time in person. I'm sure different people will see tints differently as well.

I think when known lights shown against newer lights with warmer tints reveals the true nature of the "color" it projects.

Even the same make and model can vary in tint from one another.

I do like the looks of the Q2 LEDs though. Eagerly awaiting Malkoff's offering.

I think it might also have to do with the lighting environment were used to or in.
When the warm energy saving light bulb burnt out which was on the ceiling above my computer, I decided to try out a cool one and for the first two weeks or so everything looked so blue but now after quite a few months I would say it actually looks warm, although i'm not sure if its just me or the bulbs actually changed tints.

Also when i first got my WC Q5 dereelight droppin, I played around with it for awhile and after awhile I went to use my RB80 L0D and I thought somthing was wrong as the L0D looked totally dull yellow.

EV_007 said:

I do like the looks of the Q2 LEDs though. Eagerly awaiting Malkoff's offering.

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Q2 has nothing to do with the tint. A Cree Q2 WC would be in the cool white tint range, a Cree Q2 5A would be in the neutral white tint range.

orcinus said:

Not just racial, but cultural too.

My point is, even with two lights compared under the same conditions, head to head (same reflective surface, same ambient lighting or lack of it, same monitor - if it's a photo of a beamshot) there will still be wildly different opinions and perceptions of what is wrong and what is right.

Even if two people agree one light is more greenish, while the other is more purplish, to one person the greenish one will look "white" and the purplish one purple, while to the other the first one might look green and the second one "white". The third one might say both are tinted.

(That said, black body spectrum isn't just a theoretical mumbo jumbo. We (our eyes and brains) really do have a tendency to call "white" colors that are on that line (or band), so it's much harder to "deviate" individually towards green or purple.)

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This is actually makes a fair bit of sense considering that up until very recent history, just about every light source has been a blackbody radiator, either originating from the sun, or from some sort of fire/flame.

Also, the scattering away of sunlight in the sky has the effect of changing the sun's apparent color temperature, but never tinting the sun green or purple. This is due to some fundamental properties of physics that I choose not to explain. The sun will appear to be close to its "actual" temperature of 5800k when it's high in the sky, and will appear to be a lower color temperature at other times in the day. If the sun is out of sight, diffuse skylight will have the specrum similar to the "infinite" color temperature limit case of the blackbody curve.

The moon when it reflects sunlight also has a "warmifying" effect -- where natural sunlight is about 6000k, reflected moonlight is inherently about 4000k. Again, still on the blackbody line -- not purple or green.

I think color "tint" in the same way as "color rendition".

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Color rendition is actually a third factor, along with color temperature (eg orange -> blue), and color tint (purple -> green).

Multiple light sources may appear to be exactly the same color temperature and tint against a white wall, but due to differences in the specturm, objects viewed under that light might appear to be completely different colors.

Consider the following light sources:

A) An incandescent filament at 3500k
B) A fluorescent lamp at 3500k
C) A RGB LED tuned so that it appears to be 3500k
D) A Cyan-Yellow LED mix that appears to be 3500k

Source (A), a truye blackbody radiator, is defined as 100 CRI or ideal color rendering.

Source (B) will probably be pretty close, maybe scoring a rating of 82 CRI. For the most part things will appear the same, except maybe red objects might apper slightly more 'orange', or some other hue shifts may be evident because the light source is composed of a whole bunch of discrete lines rather than a continuous spectrum

Source (C) is an interesting case. While RGB is great for things like monitors, it generally doesn't make for a very good light source. Many things appear their natural color, but certain things like wood for example tend to look bright ORANGE because it will reflect red, but almost no green. Mixing a fourth primary color, Amber (between red and green) dramatically improves color rendition.

Source (D) is an extreme case and would score an extremely LOW CRI rating, close to 0. Any red, orange, yellow, or brown object under this light would simply appear yellow. Blue objects would always appear cyan. Green objects could even appear "white" (reflecting a combination of yellow and cyan...) Because there are only two primary colors in the light source, it can't possibly reproduce

Note: the CRI number printed on fluorescent lamps etc. is only valid for comparing lights at the same apparent color temperature, as I have done here.