Olight M20 Crimson versus standard M20 With Red

Hey guys I'm looking at the Olights for a weapon mounted red light to hunt coyotes with. I see the Olight Crimson M20 drops to 105 lumens while the standard M20 with white LED is 320 lumens. What kind of lumen drop do you speculate I would incur if I used the M20 with a red filter?

Basically I wonder what will be brighter while using a red filer, The factory M20 Crimson or the M20 with a red filter.

Was wondering the exact same thing. I have an Olight m20sx that goes to 500 lumens. the red filter that came with it is terrible. cant see ten feet with it on.

NikolaTesla said:

Red filters waste 95% of the light. LED's are pure red, no waste. My toy NightCutter RED puts out more than A filtered SureFire.

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From a 2005 thread.............."Red Filter vs Red LED for night vision?"

EDIT: Also found this after some deeper searching on the web.

Instruments used for the first LED light source instructions, but all kinds of light colored LED lights in traffic and large screen has been widely applied, have a very good economic and social benefits. The 12-inch red traffic lights as an example, is used in the United States have long life, low-efficiency 140 watt incandescent lamp as a light source, it produced 2,000 lumens of white light. The red filter, the loss-90 percent, only 200 lumens of red light. In the light of the new design, Lumileds companies have 18 red LED light source, including the loss of circuit, a total power consumption of 14 watts to generate the same optical effect. Automotive LED lights is also the source of important areas. ​

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I hope this helps,

Jamie

Glad this topic was brought up. Both my Olight M20s (320 lm ) and my Jetbeam RRT 21 (400+ lm) appear to put out only a small amount of their potential with red filters installed. I've tried each with their own brand of red filter. I would guess its only 100 lumens or so they put out with filters installed. My question is would there be better output and quality of the beam from a dedicated red led M20 warrior over using filters.

Hi Guys,
anybody do a real-world side by side test of an Olight M20 Crimson v M20 white led and filter?
cheers.

Tedwardtoo said:

Hi Guys,
anybody do a real-world side by side test of an Olight M20 Crimson v M20 white led and filter?
cheers.

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The white LED will have very low output through a red filter. White LEDs make very few red photons. Once you remove all the non-red photons, you're left with little light. In your head, imagine a light that is about 1/10th the output (It will look about 1/3 as bright).

Red filters only have 4% efficiency, iirc. Less with leds.

Here is a quick physics-is-fun experiment I did recently: take a glow-in-the-dark sticker and shine a red LED torch directly onto it. Note how effective (not) it is at charging up the phosphor. Repeat using a white LED flashlight equiped with a red filter.

Result: red LED completely ineffective at charging up the phosphor. No afterglow whatsoever is visible. With the white LED + red filter, there IS a visible effect: the sticker glows a bit.

Conclusion: some shorter-wavelength light is passing the filter. With the red LED, there is no significant shorter wavelenght light.