SC600 Tint vs Brightness

Thought you might be interested in a photo showing how the tint changes with brightness on a SC600w (ordered 12/26, shipped 12/28 despite being on back order).

Unmodified Photo of six brightnesses. Top row H1,M1,L1. Bottom row H2 (300),M2,L2.



Saturation increased to exaggerate the colors.



and, one more thing, a macro of the LED surface on the lowest low:


I must say I'm blown away by this flashlight in real use. Indoors it's the first light where I don't use it to find the lightswitch in the dark, I just leave it on (usually 300) and use it as the room light. Outdoors it's the first light where I don't just see the road here or there, or a bit of the yard over by the fence; I just see _the road_ or _the yard_, period. The SC60w was close, and has a more uniform tint, but having that turbo setting available makes such a difference.
It won't be replacing the 1xAAA Fenix LD01 for EDC (neither did the SC51), but 90% of the time it's going to be the light I want if the keychain light isn't there or won't do the job.

I find that in use it is almost impossible to see the tint shift. If you shine it on a very white sheet of paper, yes. Otherwise to me at least it is negligible. Is that your perception as well?

Thanks for these pics and mini-review - l like the closeup pic of the emitter. I've been salivating a bit over the SC600w; I guess it it time for me to order one. What battery are you using, if I may ask?

I missed the presence of the Part 2 thread for this light. Mighta put it there otherwise.

Shift? Barely perceptible if I'm looking at the beam indoors or on the road. On grass or trees, can't tell.
The variation across the beam is more noticeable than anything else, mostly that ring around the hot spot, which actually gets less defined (to my eye) at lower brightnesses. It's more yellow/green than I was expecting based on the 60w but apart from walls I don't really see that. At the lowest/greenest settings ceiling bounce is dim enough I can't see color anyway. It's all interesting to me but not bothersome. Especially not compared to everything else that is so impressive.

I'm using bare NCR18650A (from Orbtronic) or the older 2900 (eBay) version. This light has a little spring for the + terminal not the solid contact, btw. I have a Redilast 2900 which will fit but I don't want to squish it and plus, it's the only cell long enough to work well (no blip off when you set it down tail first) with my Solarforce L2P so I'll reserve it or the trustfire 2400/flame for the Quark RGB that has no low voltage protection.

Only reservation about those is that I initially forgot about the .3C charge limit and used .7C for a bit. 800 (& some odd) mA maximum. The 3 amp discharge at turbo they're perfectly happy with. I ordered a basic 700mA from cottonpickers few days ago. Tired of the fan noise from the hobby charger. Those with the .5/1A 4sevens should take note, though.

I don't think the tint shift is specific to just the SC600w. All levels on that light are current controlled and I have read many a thread here about tint shift in LEDs powered by a current controlled source.

Apparently PWM sources don't experience the tint shift as much, but then you get to pretend you are in a disco when you use the lower levels of the light.

radellaf said:

Thought you might be interested in a photo showing how the tint changes with brightness on a SC600w (ordered 12/26, shipped 12/28 despite being on back order).

Click to expand...

Your observations mimic what I see with my 600w also. It's an outstanding light though. Mine is one from the first batch pre-order. Nothing else I have compares to it. Probably my SC60w comes the closest. That's mainly because it's the next step down in the ZL line. They're both keepers for sure and have their own niche.

Thanks for your posting.

That is an extremely interesting set of photos. Enhancing the color saturation seems a very good way of illustrating the slight bias in the tint which would otherwise be almost imperceptible.

Also, an excellent macro shot of the actual emitter on its extra-low setting.

I thought it might be, though of course it risks encouraging even more tiny tint kvetching
Also, FWIW, I had a hard time with WB. I set it custom to center of the beam on high, and then (the Canon S100 allows this) manually tweaked the y-b an g-m axis adjustment to get what looked right at least on the camera LCD. Ended up looking pretty true to life there and on the Mac.

The macro I had to try after some comment in the main thread about it looking like an ant with an ant size spraycan painted red dots on the surface.

Neither the S100 or iPhone was able to get enough pixels on the die to do it justice. The 10x loupe did work, and accounts for the geometric distortion and maybe a bit of blue CA on the left. 20x loupe wouldn't be able to focus that deep in the reflector.

Fun to do. Of course now I'd like to try it on a cool white XM-L. I spent that 2nd zebralight $ on a Pilot Prera fountain pen though. FWIW I take a lot of through a loupe macros of pen nibs, which is how I got the practice. I wonder if the head comes off the XM-L Yezl I got when that emitter first started showing up, but I don't think so. And, would take work to get a low-low.

Tell ya what. I suspect a cool white S80 (?) is in my future and should be amenable.