LED flashlights and airbrushed/photoshopped models

Sorry, no pictures of swimsuit models clutching dive lights. :nana:

I don't know about you guys (or gals), but when I used to read fitness magazines, I gradually accepted the tanned, chiseled, and ultra-fit models as normal, to the point where I considered the physiques of real, live, ordinary people as sub-standard. (Including myself, BTW.) I still find myself comparing normal people to the airbrushed/photoshopped beauties on magazine covers and advertisements.

Well, a few days ago I bought a couple of those cheapo Cyclops Xenon Tactical flashlights at Sam's Club. The beams looked disgustingly yellow to me. I replaced the "Cyclops" 123s with fresh SF123s, and while the brightness improved they still looked yellow to me.

I prepared to post a rant about the horrible yellow tint, and found to my surprise that several CPFers, whose opinions I highly respect, were comparing the Cyclops favorably to the output of a Surefire P60 lamp assembly.

In real world conditions, the xenon lamp looks pretty good. When I shine it on a white wall or compare it to any of my Luxeon lights, the Cyclops looks yellow.

I asked my non-flashaholic wife to describe the beam color. She said the xenon light looked white, and the Luxeons looked bluish. My kids said the same thing.

Whiskey... Tango... Foxtrot?!

Have Luxeon lights screwed up my perception of what white light is supposed to look like?

All of the incandescant light bulbs in my house now look yellow to me. The halogen headlights of my wife's minivan look yellow. My car's headlights look white to me (they're HID), and my wife says they look bluish.

I fired up my Mag60, Mag85 and a Roar of the Pelican. Yup, yellowish. Only when overdriven 1.2V above spec do they look white to me. At least my wife doesn't think they look blue when overdriven. That would make me *really* paranoid.

Am I going to have to lay off the Luxeons for a while to recalibrate my eyes' color perception? Purchase some V1 tinted Luxes? Change all of the yellow light bulbs in my house to GE Reveal bulbs?

I notice it too. Yeah, after a while without LEDs' the Xenons' look white again. Oh, and more pics of the hottie with the light....

the GE Reveal bulbs are nice.. i grabbed some from target on sale the other day....

Good, it's not just me.

BTW, the pretty lady with the Maglite is just a stock photo I found.



Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

I was doing a Google image search for pictures of bikini-clad hotties clutching dive lights. My wife walked into the study and peered over my shoulder.

"What are you looking at?"

"Uh... Would you believe I'm trying to find pictures of swimsuit models holding flashlights? :duck: "

"You and those darn flashlights. Can't you just look at pictures of swimsuit babes without flashlights, like a normal guy?"

I love my wife... :thumbsup: :kiss:

Hookd_On_Photons said:

"Uh... Would you believe I'm trying to find pictures of swimsuit models holding flashlights? :duck: "

"You and those darn flashlights. Can't you just look at pictures of swimsuit babes without flashlights, like a normal guy?"

I love my wife... :thumbsup: :kiss:

Click to expand...

:whoopin::whoopin::whoopin::whoopin:

Hookd_On_Photons said:

Roar of the Pelican.

Click to expand...

I've wondred for a while... does this refer to PM6? Does the roar refer to its output?

I've noticed too that luxeon lights make xenon lights look VERY yellow.

-David

Hookd_On_Photons said:

"You and those darn flashlights. Can't you just look at pictures of swimsuit babes without flashlights, like a normal guy?"

Click to expand...

lol.....

hey that chick in the picture can grab my m@g any day! lol

yep yellow sucks, i think alot of us think of white as slightly bluish. makes "white" look yellowish... ?

Just this evening I experienced the same effect but from the opposite view. I was messing around with some HotWires, comparing beams, hunting white walls and such. I hit the dark wall with a Tri-Star and it looked sky blue. Very strange because I use this light fairly frequently and it does have a bit of a cool blue tint but it seemed like a different light all together.

The mind, the eyes and flashlights...all fascinating things.

cheapo: Roar of the Pelican post from KevinL here:

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=75801

Detailed write-up here:

http://lights.lightrefineries.org/?page_id=9

ROP lithium edition:

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=95327

I got the Big D bulbs from Brightguy. Unfortunately, the #3854s are currently out of stock.

http://www.brightguy.com/detail.php?Sku=PEL3854

so you just pop the Pelican bulb into your mag??

-David

The Pelican 3854 bulb is PR base, and will fit into the Mag socket.

The problem is, it will melt the Mag stock plastic reflector. So you need a metal reflector. Fivemega offers groupbuys on these every once in a while. They are also available here:

http://www.light-edge.com/products.asp?section=Mag Reflectors&cat=42

You'll also need a power source that can deliver 7.2V, at *very* high current. The high-output 3854 bulb sucks 4 amps, the low output needs only 1.5 amps. Most commercial-grade NiMH batteries will demonstrate a lot of voltage sag under 4 amps, so you may need to overdrive it a bit. Phaserburn and Ginseng have recommended using 7 Energizer 2100mAH NiMHs. I've used this configuration myself, and it works fine. If you use a true high-current cell (like the CBP1650 AA), you should run the ROP with 6 cells. The reason I use AAs is because I like the Mag 2D form factor, and I use an 8AA-to-2D adapter (available from modamag).

If you don't mind the Mag 4D form factor and want to use sub-Cs instead, check out KevinL's detailed writeup in the link I posted above.

Here are some beamshots I took last winter. The ROP is on the left, a Mag60 on the right. The ROP is being powered by 7 Energizer 2100mAH NiMH batteries (in an 8AA-to-2D adapter, with a dummy cell).

The Mag60 has a calculated bulb lumen output of [(6.0/5.0)^3.5) * 326 = 617 lumens. (The Welch-Allyn rerating formula... the rerated output of a lamp with lumen output of L at voltage V1 at a different voltage V2 is [(V2/V1)^3.5) * L )

The fire hydrant is about 60 feet away.



Here is a pine tree about 15 feet away.



That's not too shabby, considering the estimated 30% photon loss from the big honkin' hole in the back of the Mag reflector that the bulb sticks through (The Magcharger has a much smaller hole for the bipin bulb), plus the voltage sag at 4 amps.

Here's SilverFox's discharge curve for the Energizer 2100mAH:



(Taken from the NiMH Battery Shootout in the Batteries/Electronics forum, rehosted on ImageShack <- linky)

You'd do much better with the CBP1650s:



And yes, to stay on topic, next to my Streamlight ProPolymer 4AA Luxeon (which my eye perceives as faintly bluish-tinted white), the Mag60 looks yellow. It sure doesn't look yellow in the pictures above. *sigh*

Maybe I need to recalibrate my eyes to what "yellow" and "blue" look like under natural lighting conditions? Yeah, that's the ticket...

Wow! What kind of dive light is that? That's hot.

I just realized that I have a sunlight comparison chamber. The staircase is lit during the day by a lot of indirect sunlight. The staircase empties into the living room through a door sized entry. If the shades are down (aluminum opaque behind curtains) the living room is dark. If I shine a light at the staircase entry the beam on the outside of the entry is easily compared to the sunlight in the staircase. I'm astonished and will report that the Tri-Star LED is much closer, actually almost the same, in comparison to the light in the stairwell than any HotWire I have.

Why is this? I think it's because the light in the stairwell is coming from a blue sky. Now I think I'll need to use some mirrors to throw some direct sunlight into the stairwell and compare that to my lights.

I'm now, not so sure that replicating direct sunlight temp is the way to go. When we are behind a mountain, a building or in the woods the light is indirect and bluer because it's "skylight".

I think my eyes and perception are now either better trained or completely discalibrated. I think my brain might be discalibrated because I was equally interested in the dive light, the colors in the sunset and the other *ahem* features in your nice photo.

----------------

- Jeff

While I too think of my luxeons as "white" several other people have also told me they look "bluish" as well (even one with a pronounced yellow tint to my eyes- my cousin refered to it as "that blue light"). I guess they are bluer in comparison, and people's only reference is what they are used to...