Replace EA4W lens with non AR lens to change beam color?

Hey guys, I've started a couple new threads today, I'm done with work for the week and got time to be curious and ask questions here so thanks to anyone who can answer any of my question...

I notice the AR coating on the lens of my EA4W is very heavy/purple. I'm wondering if replacing it with a non-AR coated lens would make the light warmer. Has anyone done this? (I wonder the same thing for my SC52 but I'm not going to be the first to try replacing that, if its anything like the SC51 it would mean smashing it out).


Ive seen talk of doing that recently on other lights but never seen pics of the difference it makes, is it worth it? Is there a visable difference at all? As you know the EA4W is far from warm, I'd consider it just barely neutral, so even a slight increase in warmth would be worth it to me for a new lens and a little work.

The quality of the AR lens is one of the best features of the EA4, I wouldn't replace it. Switching to a non-AR coating wouldn't have a significant effect on tint either. What you may want to look into are different types of colour filters which go over the existing lens and can be used to tweak tints quite effectively.

I can't speak for the EA4W, but I did change the lens on my titanium S10 Baton. The AR coating on the lens gave it a cat **** green tint, and a crazy purple halo around the spill. The tint was noticeably better, sans purple halo, without the lens on it. I ended up taking a lens from a standard S10 and using that on the Ti version. Most of the nasty green is gone, and the purple halo is barely noticeable. Unfortunately I didn't take any before/after shots, but the difference is noticeable.

Generally speaking, I don't think the lens would make much of a difference in tint, but in the case of the Ti S10s, it was a significant factor. For the EA4W, I'm not sure. The tint on mine is pretty much perfect, and I haven't noticed any of the issues with that lens that I did on the S10.

Interesting to hear that, I'd never heard of an AR coating having a large effect on overall tint, just the 'halo' outside the spillbeam.

One thing to keep in mind is that the colour you see reflected in the lens when shining an external light on it is the colour that is most blocked by the coating and so less of that is getting through; biasing the light to its opposite according to the visual system. For example if you shine another light on an AR lens and it reflects green, then that means that the actual light OTF of the light will be biased towards red comapred to no lens/coating, and of course vice versa, and the same for blue/yellow respectively.

Most AR coatings on flashlight lenses do not affect the tint.

However, there are some notable exceptions. The lenses on both my Titanium and aluminum Olight S10, and on my Roche F12 were all slightly yellow tinted. So much so that I could see the tint easily when I removed the lenses from the lights end then looked through them. The view through the lens was noticeably yellow compared to the view to the side of the lens. This tint was enough to significantly affect the beams of all 3 lights.

Unfortunately, without removing the lens from the light it isn't possible to tell which ones are bad.