led vs incan color rendition

I have several led lights. Some are tinted blue, green, and white. However, they all make colors look 'washed out'. This is not a problem with an incandescent bulb.

Is there any good high power led that does a better job with colors?

So far I have tried:
arc (blueish)
bb400 (green)
bb650 lux 3 (white)
everled

All my small leds do this also (arc aaa/ opalec/ etc).

What do you mean washed out?

kinda like a colour picture getting bleached after being left exposed to direct sunlight for a long time.

My Surefire KL5 on my M2 Millennium body (L5 Lumamax equivalent) produces very nice colors. It makes green really green and brown really brown. The light is basically near pure white.

LED does not contain the red spectrum as we are all thought to understand in science. Red, green, and blue light form white light. In the LED world it just don't happen. That is why manufacturer have so much problems getting the colors right, and white. That is also why you feel that details are very much lacking at whatever you shine it on.

With incand things are very different. Incand contains plenty of red spectrum and with that all detail pops out. But are you getting the right colors exactly? No. Incand lights are very warm in color temperature but of course if seeing detail is more important to you....

Andy Ho

Light is very warm most of the day, it's only 5000K or whatever in the middle of the day. You can see well with light from a sunset, and that's very warm light. Some LEDs do it right, but a lot seem to "wash out" colors, maybe it's due to the low power output.

The problem is related to how closely the LED output approximates a black body radiator (The sun is effective a blackbody radiator, with a temperature of roughly 5600K. Incandescents are essentially blackbody radiatiors with a temperature of 2700-2950K. Black body radiators are characteristed by continuous spectra, whose peak is output is proportional to the Temperature, and energey radiated is T^4. Fluoescent and white LED's rely on phosphors that are in general, not continous spectral output, the extent to which the actual output matches a true blackbody is effectively the color rendition index. MOst cheap Fluoros have very poor CRI's because the spectral output of the lamp is a poor match. If you use more sophisitcated and expensive phosphors, like a GE Chroma 50, you can get much beter CRI's. The absence of various spectral components tends to enhance some colours, and degrade others, hence the so called washed out appearance. It is characteristic of a light source with a low CRI..

Hello Torbodog,

I have shown LED lights to several friends and their comment was that it is a "flat" light. There seems to be less contrast from an LED light, and that could have to do with the color spectrum.

I had a discussion with Bernhard about the best pen light to use to examine throat tissue during a medical examination. He is using a custom LED light. I pointed out that Welch Allyn recommends a halogen lamp for accurate color rendition. His experience was that the LED light works well if you have a lot of light output.

You might try a little experiment. Take your BB650 and look at a multi colored fabric with the light held 10 feet away. It will look a bit washed out. Now look at the same fabric with the light at a distance of 1 feet. It should look more saturated.

We did a test in our household and decided that the Welch Allyn halogen Pen Lite lamp gave better color rendition than similar brightness LED lights. More powerful LED lights were difficult to compare, but seemed to handle the color rendition better, however the halogen lamp was still the best.

Tom

Yeah... I was trying a new approach with a light.

I had a bb650 lux 3 in a minimag strapped to the handlebars of my bike using a twofish mounting block to do some night riding. But, I was also taking the head off the light for a super flood beam.

So, I'm talking looking at brown dirt, leaves, ROOTS, gravel at distances from 6-25 feet. I was really missing that red part of the spectrum.

It is a shame too because if it worked I could have strapped about 3 of them to the bars and the coverage would have been really nice (and light weight too).

turbodog,

I think it's important to remember that it is he LED and not its host that has bearing on the spectrum of light produced. As suggested above, the LED's need to provide more lumens, in my experience, than an incandescent, to provide ample information in the "reds". This is one of the reasons that I think the SF A2 is such a sleeper.

Yeah, I know the host doesn't affect this issue. It would have been a killer solution if it had worked though.

Lumileds has a warm white CRI 90 LED. With a CRI of 90, this is quite good light with a pretty broad spectral output. The downside is that the output (Lumens) is fairly low.

yeah... low not work too good

lux 3 could have been brighter