Not all high CRI's are the same - V10R Ti & Haiku beamshots

On the way home tonight I stopped in a little park and got these shots. It's been a while since I've carried a camera which could do this, so I'm pretty jazzed to hopefully start doing my part in presenting some beam shots from time to time.

Not much new here really, but I wanted to show that although the high CRI XP-G modded V10R Ti and high CRI Nichia 119 equipped Haiku share a common label with regards to the emitters, the output is very different between the two.

About 15'-20' into the bushes - high CRI XP-G modded V10R Ti


About 15'-20' into the bushes - high CRI Nichia 119 equipped Haiku


About 35'-40' over the railing and onto the tree - high CRI XP-G modded V10R Ti


About 35'-40' over the railing and onto the tree - high CRI Nichia 119 equipped Haiku



I know I made a couple of blunders here in not locking any settings, and also allowing the camera to move in the
first set, then aiming the flashlights slightly differently on the second.

So the way I see it, they both do a great job of rendering colors, as expected, but the Nichia is what I think should properly be termed a neutral emitter, and the XP-G as a slightly warm tint, with neither being superior to the other, except as determined by the individual.
There is much to love about the flat accurate light projected by my Haiku, but I enjoy the incan-like warmth of my V10R Ti too. Which is better - a blond or a brunette? Just like these lights and tints, I like both. The important thing is to judge on individual merits and not in direct comparison, because that my friends, leads to such things as lessons in futility.

Thanks for sharing. I share the same thoughts as you when it comes to both XP-G and Nichia high CRI. They are nice on their own and they both have their own merits. I just love both of them.

If you have a XP-G warm, how does it compare to the CRI XP-G?

notsofast said:

If you have a XP-G warm, how does it compare to the CRI XP-G?

Click to expand...

The warm XP-G looks much pinker/rosier than the HCRI. The CCT is more or less identical, but because the HCRI is less pink, it looks more neutral.

notsofast said:

If you have a XP-G warm, how does it compare to the CRI XP-G?

Click to expand...

mvyrmnd said:

The warm XP-G looks much pinker/rosier than the HCRI. The CCT is more or less identical, but because the HCRI is less pink, it looks more neutral.

Click to expand...

It is actually hard to provide a definitive answer. My comparison is a Quark Turbo warm white against Malkoff M61HCRI and Quark 123^2 high CRI. The Malkoff appears more rosy than the Quark turbo WW whereas the Quark 123^2 appears more yellowish. I don't understand why there is so much of a difference between both XP-G high CRI.

pjandyho said:

It is actually hard to provide a definitive answer. My comparison is a Quark Turbo warm white against Malkoff M61HCRI and Quark 123^2 high CRI. The Malkoff appears more rosy than the Quark turbo WW whereas the Quark 123^2 appears more yellowish. I don't understand why there is so much of a difference between both XP-G high CRI.

Click to expand...

I suppose it's still a matter of tint.

My mother-in-law's Preon 2 WW is very pink. My 7A3 HCRI's are just pink enough and my Preon HCRI is very yellow - almost no pink. I'm guessing it's a 7B.

My personal favourite is the 7A3 HCRI. It strikes the right balance for me.

Tint is extrememly personal and subjective. I might love the 7A3, others will hate it.

kaichu dento,

Thank you for the beamshots. I have not yet tried a Nichia Hi CRI 119, although with my interest in High CRI I have started to look at Don's offerings. I am thinking if I still have the same preference for High CRI by my birthday early next year then I will treat myself to a McGizmo with the High CRI Nichia 119 - ideally one that can use AA batteries if that is available as an option.

I have previously used HDS High CRI lights which was my first experience and then purchased a Zebralight SC51c, H51c and H51Fc more recently. I have two Preons with the High CRI XP-G and I absolutely love that warm tint. I am about to order another SC51c and I am looking again at 4Sevens High CRI options that are still available. I definitely still buy Cool White lights for use in urban environments where there is a lot of ambient light but for more rural or indoor settings it is becoming High CRI every time. It says something when I find reading to become more pleasurable with a High CRI light such as the Preon or H51Fc.

It is all very subjective of course but I find as I mature as a flashaholic I am far more aware of what I like and what I want. I buy far less by way of lights than I did previously but the ones I buy are absolutely what I want.

Great pic comparisons, thank you for sharing.

Are the pics similar to how you see both tints in person, I assumed the XPG HCRI was more warmer in color?

I must say, the beams on both lights are really clean and smooth, very nice!

notsofast said:

If you have a XP-G warm, how does it compare to the CRI XP-G?

Click to expand...

Don's warm XP-G Haiku has a 5B1 emitter in it which is around 4100K. It's also probably a R4 which means it's spec'd for 130 lumens minimum at 350 mA.

I'm not sure which High CRI XP-G that Kaichu Dento has, but if it's a 90 CRI minimum XP-G, then the CCT is around 3000K and it would be pehaps a Q2 which means it's spec'd for 87 lumens at 350 mA.

I do have the warm XP-G Haiklu, so I would expect that a High CRI (90) XP-G version would be warmer and less bright.

Kaichu Dento, did you find that the beam pattern of the two to be about the same? If so, I am guessing it's due to the fact that these are two different lights. I have tried both Don's warm XP-G LE and the Nichia 119 LE in my Haiku, and the XP-G has much brighter spill than the Nichia 119 emitter.

pjandyho said:

It is actually hard to provide a definitive answer. My comparison is a Quark Turbo warm white against Malkoff M61HCRI and Quark 123^2 high CRI. The Malkoff appears more rosy than the Quark turbo WW whereas the Quark 123^2 appears more yellowish. I don't understand why there is so much of a difference between both XP-G high CRI.

Click to expand...

This is what I've been finding, but I'm not at all surprised, as individual tint has always been a variable, and although they offer some fairly tight tint binning options these days, most makers don't want to spend the extra money to get an exact tint when approximately will still sell the light.

That's one place where buying from a maker who charges more for a light can be more predictable if they're willing to pay the extra for tint bins that please their own eye as opposed to being generally in the ball park so to speak.

mvyrmnd said:

I suppose it's still a matter of tint.

My mother-in-law's Preon 2 WW is very pink. My 7A3 HCRI's are just pink enough and my Preon HCRI is very yellow - almost no pink. I'm guessing it's a 7B.

My personal favourite is the 7A3 HCRI. It strikes the right balance for me.

Tint is extremely personal and subjective. I might love the 7A3, others will hate it.

Click to expand...

Exactly, and what's more frustrating is that, for example, while I love the rosy tint on some of my warm MiNi's, I didn't like the greenish ones which a lot of people have just written off as being characteristic of the light, they are a very mixed batch.

My tastes are close to yours in that looking at the tint charts I've always liked the A and D bins better than the B and C, having a preference for a more slightly rosy tone, as long as it doesn't go too far. That said, I think the central bands are all pretty nice, xA2, xA3, xD2, xD3, xB1, xB4, xC1, xC4.


I love both of the emitters in the pics here, but do not like the one that came in my hCRI MiNi AA nearly as much as the warm MiNi AA's that I kept.

Harry999 said:

kaichu dento,

Thank you for the beamshots. I have not yet tried a Nichia Hi CRI 119, although with my interest in High CRI I have started to look at Don's offerings. I am thinking if I still have the same preference for High CRI by my birthday early next year then I will treat myself to a McGizmo with the High CRI Nichia 119 - ideally one that can use AA batteries if that is available as an option.

I have previously used HDS High CRI lights which was my first experience and then purchased a Zebralight SC51c, H51c and H51Fc more recently. I have two Preons with the High CRI XP-G and I absolutely love that warm tint. I am about to order another SC51c and I am looking again at 4Sevens High CRI options that are still available. I definitely still buy Cool White lights for use in urban environments where there is a lot of ambient light but for more rural or indoor settings it is becoming High CRI every time. It says something when I find reading to become more pleasurable with a High CRI light such as the Preon or H51Fc.

It is all very subjective of course but I find as I mature as a flashaholic I am far more aware of what I like and what I want. I buy far less by way of lights than I did previously but the ones I buy are absolutely what I want.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a lot less frustrating when you make your choices a little more deliberately and make sure that everything fits within the parameters of what matters to you personally.

Although it can be a pretty lucky thing if you just happen to have tastes that run close to the majority, it will also be just as much of a frustration if the opposite is true. I'm finding it a lot easier to be here as a warm/neutral fan as the numbers have grown over the last couple of years.

This is a point I find some fascination in too, is that a couple years ago there seemed to be a segment, which I fit into, that preferred incans and saw the light coming from an incan to be the holy grail when it came to apparent tint, CRI and rendering, while a great many in the LED camp saw cooler as brighter-therefore-better.

I've always preferred incan-like tints and now that we've got some very good examples coming from LED's, as I believed we eventually would, it's becoming much easier to people to be incan fans and still find a great measure of satisfaction from LED's.

THE_dAY said:

Great pic comparisons, thank you for sharing.

Are the pics similar to how you see both tints in person, I assumed the XPG HCRI was more warmer in color?

I must say, the beams on both lights are really clean and smooth, very nice!

Click to expand...

You know, one thing that I was unhappy about initially was that there were other light sources which I could not preclude from the pictures, but once I had the pictures, found them to be a help, as you can see the lights in the background do not change, or at least not in an easily detectable way, while the subjects show a great range of difference, primarily in regards to evident tint variation.

The pictures do a very good representation of what my eyes were actually seeing, aside from the wider dynamic range of the eye, and to test this, I kept walking while comparing the real-time beams of the lights to the pictures I'd just taken - very close, and for all practical purposes virtually identical.

kaichu dento said:

You know, one thing that I was unhappy about initially was that there were other light sources which I could not preclude from the pictures, but once I had the pictures, found them to be a help, as you can see the lights in the background do not change, or at least not in an easily detectable way, while the subjects show a great range of difference, primarily in regards to evident tint variation.

The pictures do a very good representation of what my eyes were actually seeing, aside from the wider dynamic range of the eye, and to test this, I kept walking while comparing the real-time beams of the lights to the pictures I'd just taken - very close, and for all practical purposes virtually identical.

Click to expand...

Thank you for that.
In the 'chair photo' the beam of the Nichia is very white yet still keeps the rich colors of the chair and the surrouding tree.
I really like that emitter.

tsl said:

Don's warm XP-G Haiku has a 5B1 emitter in it which is around 4100K. It's also probably a R4 which means it's spec'd for 130 lumens minimum at 350 mA.

I'm not sure which High CRI XP-G that Kaichu Dento has, but if it's a 90 CRI minimum XP-G, then the CCT is around 3000K and it would be perhaps a Q2 which means it's spec'd for 87 lumens at 350 mA.

I do have the warm XP-G Haiku, so I would expect that a High CRI (90) XP-G version would be warmer and less bright.

Kaichu Dento, did you find that the beam pattern of the two to be about the same? If so, I am guessing it's due to the fact that these are two different lights. I have tried both Don's warm XP-G LE and the Nichia 119 LE in my Haiku, and the XP-G has much brighter spill than the Nichia 119 emitter.

Click to expand...

I think everything you've said is probably spot on. As for the beam pattern, nothing beats a wall/floor junction!

V10R Ti w/hCRI XP-G, Haiku w/hCRI Nichia 119 on low


V10R Ti w/hCRI XP-G on high, Haiku w/hCRI Nichia 119 on high


The first picture is not accurate for color because the tint on the right should be flat neutral and the one on the left slightly warmer. I'll work on it and try to update with more accuracy later.

Moving the two beams closer seems to have made the Haiku a little more like what I'm seeing, but still it should be more neutral with more gold for the V10R Ti.

The V10R has a bigger hotspot, smoother cutoff to darkness and less light in the spill, but I don't know how much is due to reflector and how much has to do with emitter differences.

THE_dAY said:

Thank you for that.
In the 'chair photo' the beam of the Nichia is very white yet still keeps the rich colors of the chair and the surrounding tree.
I really like that emitter.

Click to expand...

That's why when I thought I was done after the bush shots, I decided I needed to show that although cooler in direct comparison, the Nichia did very well with reds too.

Hi Pete,

It's because your camera was set to do auto white balance. Change it to daylight white balance and you will get a more accurate rendition of the tints.

pjandyho said:

Hi Pete,

It's because your camera was set to do auto white balance. Change it to daylight white balance and you will get a more accurate rendition of the tints.

Click to expand...

That's what I was going to do, but I couldn't remember which white balance setting you guys were using. I'll do that in a little bit because it's particularly frustrating wanting to make tint decisions based on beamshots with inaccurate white balance!

As you know, the high CRI Nichia 119 is only cool by direct comparison, not in actual usage.

Good stuff here! Thanks.

... As for the beam pattern, nothing beats a wall/floor junction!

Hey Pete!!
Would of thought that's be a wall / tatami junction
Stay warm! (or at least neutral)

BadHobbit said:

... As for the beam pattern, nothing beats a wall/floor junction!

Hey Pete!!
Would of thought that's be a wall / tatami junction
Stay warm! (or at least neutral)

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I should be thinking about that too!
Next floor shots will be on 畳！

Wow. The last two pictures are quite striking. The Nichia 119 captures the difference in color between the old and new wood far better than the Hi-CRI XP-G does.

I think it's more plainly accurate and it's hard not to like. The strange thing is that when I'm walking with it things seem just a bit coolish, but hitting some brown and red items shows that it's everything all true neutral tints should be.

From a position of pure enjoyment I still like the more incandescent look of the XP-G, but if someone is after neutral, the Nichia 119 is it.

I'm really glad I didn't stop with just the pictures of the bush as the second set really relay a lot more information about how these emitters render colors.

Great shots kaichu dento,i don't know about most peoples opinions are of the differences of the tints but i'll give you mine for what its worth.I think
the XP-G mod is a bit too warm for me but by your shots i think the Nichia 119 in the Haiku is fantastic,i've seen Pjandyho's beamshots with his
Haiku & they were brilliant as well.One day i'll get to own a McGizmo with the Nichia 119 & i'm looking forward to it.:naughty: