What is the most natural-color LED light or drop-in?

I might finally have the practical LED lighting needs covered, now I'd like to find the light with the most beautiful beam. Any suggestions?

In my experience, to date, it would be the Malkoff W variants.

However I have not had the pleasure of trying the warm MC-E, the warm Seoul, or the Sundrop's Nichia 083 emitters. I have a warm Seoul on the way though with plans to try the warm MC-E ASAP.

Reports are the Sundrop is best but it is also lower output which may or may not influence your decision, as well as being $$$!

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. If you are talking about the most natural LED, I would vote for the Nichia 083 high CRI. The only flashlight using that is the McGizmo SunDrop. The beam itself is a flood of only about 40 lumens maximum output. There is no reflector, just a lens over the emitter, which means you don't have a hot spot. You just have spill.

Since you have your practical light needs met, this light may not be so practical because it costs $440. On the other hand, if you want the best in color rendition, there is no other LED that comes close, in my opinion.

Cree XR-E Q3 maybe? I love the warmth of that one...

JohnF said:

Cree XR-E Q3 maybe? I love the warmth of that one...

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I agree Q2 or Q3 5A is the led used by Dereelight and I think also the mentioned Malkoff W uses that led. It has a very pleasing tint.

JohnF said:

Cree XR-E Q3 maybe? I love the warmth of that one...

Click to expand...

Q3 doesn't have anything to do with tint. A Q3 5A is a flux/tint bin that many find pleasing.

Tint, alone, has little to do with color rendition. I believe that too much emphasis is placed on LED tint. It may be important to you when looking at a white wall. Do you want a white wall to look white, yellow, green, blue, etc.? But if you take this same light, and shine it on real world objects arround you like trees, flowers, flesh tones, do these look as pleasing to you as the wall? If your standard for color rendition is daylight, many times a warm LED or even a warm incadescent will give colors that have only remote resemblance to how they should look in daylight. On the other hand, a cool or "neutral" LED will may make the white wall look white, but it often make your skin look pale or ghostly, which certainly will not please a woman using this light for her makeup.

What's special about the Nichia 083 is not its tint? ( Actually, it is somewhat yellow/pinkish.) It does a poor job on white walls, but Oh, what a beautiful job it does on almost everything else!
.

True, tint alone doesn't mean much, as supposedly a neutral/cool white with full sunlight spectrum would be the ideal. From outdoor beamshots posted though the Q2 5A lights do a much more convincing job of acccurate colors and better contrast than the Q5/R2 cool/neutral white emitters.

Personally I want to try a 3A tint... IMHO, 5A is a wee bit too warm.

I hesitate to mention this here, but one decision I have is Incan vs LED. I went into this assuming that Incan would just be a warmer, more pleasing light. But now I am not so sure. There's a great thread here on the warmer LEDs that is making me reconsider. I can't afford the Sundrop light at $440, but it seems the A5 Q3 LED such as offered by Dereelight has a warm beam. And a well-known dealer has suggested the Fenix TK20, which was designed to render colors accurately outdoors. It has a Cree Neutral White (Q2) 7090 XR-E LED. I will have to research to see how that differs from the 5A Q3, or maybe someone here knows. So at the moment I am considering a Dereelight, a Fenix TK20, or possibly a Lumens Factory Incan module.

The Deerelight, that particular Fenix, and the Malkoff W's all use 5A cree's.
The Deerelight is a Q3 5A
The Fenix is a Q2 5A
The Malkoff is a Q2 5A

The only difference is: The deerelight will be a few lumens brighter but not enough to notice without a luxmeter. You can't see it with your eyes.
Gene will only use the best Q2 5A's. Fenix may or may not center the emiter, it's luck of the draw. I have had really good Fenixes and really poor ones.

I am happy with Deerelight and love the Malkoff units, I have mixed feelings with Fenix at the moment.
I think the color rendition is a little better with the Q2 5A instead of the Q3 5A but this may just be due to the limited number of these emitters I have on hand.

Sgt. LED said:

The Deerelight, that particular Fenix, and the Malkoff W's all use 5A cree's.
The Deerelight is a Q3 5A
The Fenix is a Q2 5A
The Malkoff is a Q2 5A

The only difference is: The deerelight will be a few lumens brighter but not enough to notice without a luxmeter. You can't see it with your eyes.
Gene will only use the best Q2 5A's. Fenix may or may not center the emiter, it's luck of the draw. I have had really good Fenixes and really poor ones.

I am happy with Deerelight and love the Malkoff units, I have mixed feelings with Fenix at the moment.
I think the color rendition is a little better with the Q2 5A instead of the Q3 5A but this may just be due to the limited number of these emitters I have on hand.

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Thanks Sgt LED, I will go with the Malkoff after reading your post and doing some searches here on CPF. Also, after more reading of threads, I think what I am really looking for is a natural look to the forest when outdoors.

Now I need to figure out which drop-in to get, and what to put it into. I might have to wait, since it looks like he is sold out of the M60W and M30W (but has the M30W Flood). Moderate throw and run time would be fine, not as big an issue as quality of the beam.

For batteries, I would like to use 2 x IMR16340 or 1 x IMR18650 if that's enough power, or 1 or 2 AA Eneloops or 2700 Powerex. Any suggestions as to hosts for the Malkoff would be greatly appreciated.

Sgt. LED said:

In my experience, to date, it would be the Malkoff W variants.

However I have not had the pleasure of trying the warm MC-E, the warm Seoul, or the Sundrop's Nichia 083 emitters. I have a warm Seoul on the way though with plans to try the warm MC-E ASAP.

Reports are the Sundrop is best but it is also lower output which may or may not influence your decision, as well as being $$$!

Click to expand...

+1

OrlandoLights said:

Thanks Sgt LED, I will go with the Malkoff after reading your post and doing some searches here on CPF. Also, after more reading of threads, I think what I am really looking for is a natural look to the forest when outdoors.

Now I need to figure out which drop-in to get, and what to put it into. I might have to wait, since it looks like he is sold out of the M60W and M30W (but has the M30W Flood). Moderate throw and run time would be fine, not as big an issue as quality of the beam.

For batteries, I would like to use 2 x IMR16340 or 1 x IMR18650 if that's enough power, or 1 or 2 AA Eneloops or 2700 Powerex. Any suggestions as to hosts for the Malkoff would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Use a three cell SF for 2XAA use of the M30. Use some think paper, light weight cardboard wrapped a bit to center AA's in SF body. A bored out 6P for 18650 use of M30. A stock SF body for 2X IMR16340's and use of M60. You can use one of the after market SF size bodies already setup for 18650. Research more and you will find out where to get these bodies, if available.

Diffficult to find a host for one AA NiMh, which would not run the M30 very long, and at pretty reduced output. The M30 offers the most flexability, being able to run on 1XCR123, 1XRCR123 or any single Li-Ion (IMR included), and 2XAA NiMh, or an extreme of 3XAA NiMh. You can also use primary AA's for reduced runtime.

The M60 can be run with 2XCR123's, 2XRCR123's, or any size 2X Li-Ions (IMR included).

Bill

A decent quality and low price option is the Solarforce L2 with 18650 capable body if you want 1 host that could hold switch between the M30WL on an 18650 and an M60WL on 2 CR123 sized cells be they primary or rechargable.

Great color output, good runtime, low cost of operation, good brightness level, and versatile host.

I spent pleny more money to get basically the same thing.
I have the Surefire HA bezel and dead reliable twisty tailcap with the Leef 1X18650 HA body and run an M30WF in it on 1 AW protected 18650.

If you look at it strictly by the cost I went way overboard but it is also about as tough as you can get. Most people, including me usually, don't need this level of bomb-proof toughness.
I tell myself I bought greater peace of mind..................

Thanks, Sgt. LED and Bullzeyebill,

Sgt., I guess I want to make sure about what you said about the Malkoff and the Dereelight: Do you see a noticeable difference in the quality of the beams from the M30W and the Dereelight A5 Q3?

I see you use the M30WF. So the flood is useful for outdoors?

I'm leaning towards using IMRs, which don't have protection circuits. I think that would be ok with the Dereelight, would the Malkoff handle that ok?

Would I need to use a twisty endcap with the IMRs?

M30W and the Dereelight A5 Q3

I like the tint better on the Malkoff but as far as beam profile goes it is hard to say what you will like better. The Malkoff is an optic that is mostly throw but gives you decent spill. The Deerelight lets you pick your reflector type so you can have all throw with a smooth reflector or the utility beam of the OP reflector. I keep my Q3 5A as a smooth reflectored thrower and use my Malkoff's for most everything else.

The Malkoff flood optic is very useful outdoors, it will not reach out a long way to spot something but it is tough to beat it as a walking light since you will see you immediate area much better and will not have to waive the flashlight around as much to see things on the sides of the trail or on the trail it'self..

IMR's would not be needed for either of the LED's but if the safe chemistry makes you feel better the both of these drop-in's will run on them, remember you will get a little less runtime and you will have to watch for dimming and terminate your run at that point so you don't harm your cells. As far as how many minutes shorter, I do not know yet but I will be finding out.

The twisty tailcap recommendation is a fuzzy issue for me, I don't think twisty switches are needed in led set-up's like you want to use. But somebody else might want to back me up on that one as I am not 100%.

Sgt. LED said:

IMR's would not be needed for either of the LED's but if the safe chemistry makes you feel better the both of these drop-in's will run on them, remember you will get a little less runtime and you will have to watch for dimming and terminate your run at that point so you don't harm your cells. As far as how many minutes shorter, I do not know yet but I will be finding out.

The twisty tailcap recommendation is a fuzzy issue for me, I don't think twisty switches are needed in led set-up's like you want to use. But somebody else might want to back me up on that one as I am not 100%.

Click to expand...

Bear in mind that they may not dim at the correct point of the batteries discharge, so you might damage your cells by overdischarge. You're looking at 30 to 40% shorter runtimes with IMR18650's, the difference between standard and IMR 16340's is smaller. IMR's really shine for super high discharge (up to 10C); I'm planning a 15A drain on some IMR18650's, which simply isn't possible with li-ion.

twisty vs. clickie is a function of how many amps you're running through the setup.... most clickies are able to take a couple of amps, tops. Some special switches can take much more, but if you're running seriously high currents as you can in some hotwires, clickies would just fail, hence the need for a twisty. The lower currents of most LED setups mean that this is a non-issue, though some of the cheap DX/kai P7 switches may be prone to failure due to running ~3A through a switch meant for <1A.

Even a direct drive P7 should be fine on a clickie switch. You need to use twisties on the really hot 2xIMR battery incans as they can draw upwards of 5A.

Do keep in mind that NO led will give "natural" or "accurate" rendition of all colors, because the LEDs put out a spectral graph that looks like this:

(Red) _/\__/\__ (Blue)
the peaks in the "graph" are the colors where the LED emits light most strongly.

By contrast, a hot-wire flash, or natural sunlight, produces a spectral balance like this:
........._______
(Red) _/.........\_ (Blue) Please ignore the dots - they are spacers for the "graph".
note that the colors are all roughly at the same intensity across the visible spectrum, with a concentration at the red end, and in the blue if skylight is a factor. Your eye is designed to interpret the results of the sunlight, and adapt to the inevitable color-shifting - you don't perceive it.

Now consider what the first graph means; there are colors that won't be brought out by an LED, because there is little or no light in that region of the spectrum. The result is that Doctors don't use an LED for checking a sore throat, because an LED will de-emphasize the redness.

Bottom line is that if you really need "accurate" color perception, buy a high-intensity incandescent, not an LED.