Perceived Brightness on Arc AAAs.

What color light manufactured (currently or previously)has the brightest perceived brightness? Green? or turquoise? =\ Dosnt turquoise have two types? =\ Which is brightest. Ummm. I'm really getting sick of my search for "the perfect single cell [aa or aaa. Heck, even 9v], or other small, non lithium-using flashlight convient for always having. Stupid Stupid lights. =\ (hurts myself to hear me say that. =\) but... which has the brightest perceived color¢Õ

I Have an Arc AAA White, Green, and Turquoise. It looks to me like me turquoise is the brightest, but I will find some new batteries later and post a shot. However, the human eye always percieves light at 555 nm as the brightest. That would be blue. So, the closer you get to blue, the brighter it will seem. Ex: Blue seems brighter than turquiose, then green, yellow, orange, and finally red.

I thought cyan was percieved brighter than blue?

This is kinda dumb but what color is cyan? Is it turquoise? It appears to me my turq is brighter than my white Le but I like the white Le better. The turquoise is very cool in the dark outdoors though. dtsoll /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Phaserburn said:
I thought cyan was percieved brighter than blue?

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I'm not sure, but I didn't think a cyan Arc AAA was ever made. I thought the closest was regular blue. I've never seen the beam on one before though, so it might be closer to cyan.


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dtsoll said:
This is kinda dumb but what color is cyan?

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Cyan is like light blue. <font color="cyan">Like this.</font>


Here is picture showing the percieved bightness of a color with day or night adapted vision. The numbers are kinda hard to read, but they are: 400 on the bottom left, then 500, 600, and 700 (nm).


This picture shows the visible light spectrum.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't cyan just a lighter blue? That would mean that it was blue with a little extra red and green, which might or might not make it brighter. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Mabey someone who knows more about this could set me straight. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I just got a turquoise AAA and it appears to put out more light than the white AAA (but with some limitations). It has a larger hotspot, it's almost ALL hotspot in fact. When I shine both lights off a white ceiling, the indirect output is about twice as much as the white, lighting the room much better. The turquoise also has a longer throw. However, the turquoise loses to the white for color rendition. It has a poor ability to discern one color from another as the colors are distorted. This is true of just about any color light but white. As a result, certain colored things being illuminated by the turquoise don't show up nearly as well, or at all and thus appear dimmer. However, indirect turq. light does a better job of color rendition than direct turq. light. So, for lighting up a room in candle mode, getting around and lighting a path, the turquoise seems to have the advantage. White for everything else.

I like the turquoise for its cool factor, increased brightness, (and finer, more aggresive knurling on the head) but I EDC a white ARC because it gives me the best all around usefulness. I also EDC the LS, so I have that for when I want brighter light.

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gyverpete said:
I like the turquoise for its cool factor...

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The turquoise definitely wins that one. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Hey, BigMac. Your signature pic looks like a head-on view of the turquoise AAA beam. What is it?

The Turquoise AAA is like a mini green traffic light. Definite attention getter. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

555 nm is actually pure green...not blue. In daylight conditions are eyes are most sensitive to this wavelenght. When it's dark, they are most sensitive in the 505 nm area (cyan).

I find the cyan/turquoise/blue-green/505nm color simply easier on my eyes than any other monochromatic light. But the ARC AAA is way too bright for dark-adapted vision. So I take the white one.

Cyan (turquoise) LEDs are blue-green, not just a lighter shade of blue.

FYI - The chart and the spectrum above have the wavelengths going in the opposite direction. The X axis is reversed between the two.

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However, indirect turq. light does a better job of color rendition than direct turq. light.

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Call me anal-retentive, but I just hate the proliferation of misconceptions. No monochromatic color will give any "color perception"; that is, no perception of any color except the color being used. Your vision with a monochromatic light source is "(source color) and black" with various dimmer shades of (source color) inbetween - essentially monochromatic gray. You cannot tell what color is what. White is the only color that gives true color rendition. Don't be fooled into thinking cyan is any better than any other monochromatic color (red, green, blue, yellow, etc) at giving any color rendition. There is no white in cyan. The only color you'll see is cyan and varying darker shades of cyan depending on how much cyan is contained in other colors viewed, but you won't be able to distinguish what the colors really are.

http://thelightsite.cruxial.com/reviews/color_rendition.htm

Quickbeam, I don't think I have ever seen the word cyan used three times in the same sentence before, good work! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

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...but I just hate the proliferation of misconceptions. No monochromatic color will give any "color perception"; that is, no perception of any color except the color being used. Your vision with a monochromatic light source is "(source color) and black" with various dimmer shades of (source color) inbetween - essentially monochromatic gray. You cannot tell what color is what.


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Quickbeam,

I disagree. When I use shine my turquoise in a totally dark room on certain colored objects, I CAN discern color. There is just slight tint distortion of some colors and complete distortion of others. A blue bottle cap appears blue, but slightly lighter shade. A stainless mesh watch band looks stainless. A green plant looks green but slightly darker. An orange handles scissors appeared dark orange. White objects have the turq. tint but I can tell that they're either white or off white. And when I shine the light off the ceiling, the colors of these items are even less distorted.

As a controlled informal test, I took a pack of colored pencils and here is what I saw. The first color in each line is the actual color and after the = sign is the color I saw. I did this without knowing what colors or which order they were in before hand so I wouldn't be biased. I wrote the color I observed, lengthwise on a piece of tape that I stuck across the pencils. Then I wrote the list you see below. Also, I got another family member to do this test and they came up with very similar answers.

orange=dark brownish orange
goldenrod=yellow
maroon=black
red=dark brown
pink=pink
yellow=light yellow
dark blue=black
green=olive
light green=light olive
blue=light blue
light blue=baby blue
royal blue=navy blue
purple=purple
brown=black
choc. brown=brown
grey=grey
white=white
black=black


I also looked at the pencils under a yellow Photon, and the color rendition was even better that the turquoise. Less distortion of most colors and fewer total misses.

Your own web page verifies that some colors disappear and others are rendered slightly distorted in the map images. Black, grey shades and LED color are not the only colors that show up.

I do agree that white light is the best and I PREFER it. I don't EDC the turq. I only got one to compare and because it's a cool color. And the yellow photon I do EDC is only there for backup. White is my first choice because there is true color rendition as you stated. Well, actually it's very close to true because even white LEDs and incandescents have slight tinting that can differ from PURE WHITE. Your map pictures also show this difference when comparing the white LED to "normal". What source produced normal? Daylight?

BTW, cool site! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif I've visited quite frequently esp. when I started getting into flashlights about a year ago. I esp. like the reviews.

Gyverpete -

Actually, based on the colors you claim to see, I believe what you are seeing in some cases is fluorescence of certain colors. These objects are absorbing the high energy turquoise light and re-emitting it - not reflecting it. Take out a magazine cover and look at it under the turquoise and it'll be turquoise, shades of turqouise grey, and black. Shine it at a package of fluorescent markers, or fluorescent highlighting drawn on a piece of paper and you should see the actual colors.

Also consider that although colored LEDs operate in a very narrow band of the spectrum, their spectrum rating is where the peak is - they're not 100% monochromatic. There is a little bleed over into other nearby areas of the spectrum.

Last, based on my own perceptions I have a difficult time putting faith in the results of your informal test. Were you guessing at the colors based on the fact that you knew what colors were in the package of pencils? You had to have seen them before the test and knew what colors were available... If you run the same test as a "single blind" test I bet you wouldn't get nearly as many right.

If you want to try it, here's how: Buy a brand new box of crayons - a big box. Have someone else pick 20 colored crayons, remove the wrappers, and put them in order in a shoebox so they can't change order. Have them record the colors in order. You take the closed shoebox into a completely dark closet and open the box, looking in with your colored light. Record the colors you see (not what you guess them to be, what you really see - this is VERY hard to do) in order and when done, compare your list with the actual colors that was kept hidden by your assistant.

Here's a pic of a box of 64 crayons under green light (I don't have turquoise, but this is pretty darn close and demonstrates the problem just as well.) What are the colors?



How about just the colors and order of the colored crayons printed on the box top?

If you don't know what the choices are, you can't guess and are left with describing them only as the colors you actually see, which is green, light green, dark green, and black.

Imagine trying to distinguish a red and a violet cable under this light...

Good questions and glad you like the site - it's there for people like you! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Quickbeam is absolutely correct when it comes to a light of ... for example... a single color/wavelength. In his
example, what you are seeing is what is left of the color after the crayon has absorbed some of the green
light.

When you perceive an item as having color, you are really seeing the light that bounces off the item... the light that is NOT absorbed.
The primary colors are yellow, cyan and magenta. cyan is a turquoise colored blue and cyan is a pinkish red.
A "yellow" item absorbs magenta and cyan
A "cyan" item absorbs yellow and magenta
A "magenta" item absorbs cyan and yellow.
A "black" item absorbs all colors (a black item will look black under any light.)
A "white" item reflects all colors ( a white item will look cyan under a cyan light, yellow under a yellow light and magenta under a magenta light)

Barring certain phenomenon (like, as quickbeam mentioned, fluorescence), the only color that you can see under a single wavelength of light is different shades of that single wavelength.

This is also why colors are washed out at night. The moon only reflects a subset of the spectrum of light put out by the sun.
This is also why colors are washed out under water. By the time you get down to 60 or 80 feet, the yellows and magentas have been filtered. Without a flashlight, all you can see is varying shades of cyan.

I was talking about the eye's sensivity to certain colors. which seems brighter... =\

P K, We are actually not that far off from your topic. This indirectly relates to brightness since, as I said in my first post, some colors don't show up well or correctly under monochromatic(single color) lights and thus may appear darker or dimmer than when illuminated by white light. This seems esp. so with dark colors as noted in my "test". Lighter colors, and white seem less affected and thus appear brighter with the turq. than with the white. For a monochromatic flashlight the turquoise AAA is probably the brightest of the AAA colors. But I still recommend white as the most useful.

To me, the turquoise AAA makes a room appear twice as bright as the white AAA when shone off a white ceiling for example. I can see more objects in the room with the turquoise AAA. It lights up a larger area. And the turquoise AAA is harsher and brighter to stare into than the white AAA. And it lights up more of the front of my white shed than the white does.

Quickbeam and obeck,
Thanks for your more scientific explanation of monochromatic lights. It may be that what I am seeing is not reflected light but something else. Either way, I see those pencils in the colors I listed. And I don't have super-vision /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif (sorry about the pun). I did not know what colors or how many, were in the pack beforehand. The pack was provided to me by a family member who handed it to me in a dark room illuminated by only the turquoise AAA. I then put a strip of masking tape across all 18 pencils, and wrote on the tape what color I perceived each one to be under the turq. light. I then had the family member (who owned the pencils and knew approx. what colors were in there) to observe and write down their perception the same way, on a different strip after I had removed my label. Our results varied only slightly. The pencils themselves are not printed with the color, so it was only after we did the test that we identified the actual colors and compared them to what we saw under the turq.

Here are pics of the pencils under the 4 light sources I tried. No flash was used. The LED lights were held about 6 inches away at an angle to the front of the pack to avoid glare. Note the brightness and color rendition (or lack thereof). My camera is not the best and I couldn't get the pics any brighter than this so some of the colors are not rendered as well as I saw them.
From top to bottom: incandescent, turquoise, white, yellow.






Like I said, it was informal and I have no fancy equipment. But you can tell what some of these colors are, right? And I can't deny what I saw with my eyes and really that is the only important critic of the light that our flashlights emit, and the things we see by them.

ps. sorry for such a long post.

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gyverpete said:
Hey, BigMac. Your signature pic looks like a head-on view of the turquoise AAA beam. What is it?

The Turquoise AAA is like a mini green traffic light. Definite attention getter. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

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That is actually a green. I tried it with a turquiose and it did end up a bit brighter but I liked the green color better. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

P.S. Sorry for the late reply but I've been away.

Gyverpete - Thanks for the pics. Looks like the Turquoise has a short enough wavelength to get some fluorescence going in inks used in the paint on the outside of the colored pencils. Check out the same ones under a blue LED and see if the colors are more profound - if so, it's fluoresence, not reflection.

I notice under yellow you can see yellow, dark yellow, and black as predicted. Yellow light doesn't have enough energy to cause fluorescence.

BTW, one crayon in the box actually fluoresced a little under the green light - it's hard to see in the pic - it was pink and fluoresced very slightly orange. Several of the wrappers fluoresce brightly under blue light.

Remember though, most things you encounter don't fluoresce - hence why monochromatic light is of very limited use.

P_K - a little off-topic tangent never hurts if we all learn something /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

This is one of the most informative and enlightening threads that I've ever read on the entire forum. I'm going to print it and study it so that instead of just understanding it, I can also repeat it. I wonder if a moderator can somehow attract more attention to it.

Thanks for all the info.