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Thread: Any research on optimal color temperature for weapon lights?

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Titan74 View Post
    Warm light penetrates vegetation much better than neutral white or cool light.

    If you are searching for something that is trying to hide in the bushes, warm light will help you to see into the bushes, whereas cool light will only lit up the first layer of leaves, which effectively blocks you from seeing the target behind the bush.
    My experience is that candela (or tighter hotspot) is what achieves this more so than the light's Kelvin.

  2. #12
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    Beyond a light's temperature, the CRI will most likely also play a role in how fast you can PID something... which I've always been curious about for the WML players, from SureFire to Modlite. They'll throw lumens and candelas out, and on occasion, temperature, but yet to see CRI figures, and I don't care enough to try to dig out the actual diode used.
    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

    老僧三十年前未參禪時、見山是山、見水是水、及至後夾親見知識、有箇入處、見山不是山、見水不是水、而今得箇體歇處、依然見山秪是山、見水秪是水。

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  3. #13
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    What would be considered a good CRI for a weapon light? I've never heard that term before.


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    Quote Originally Posted by mig1nc View Post
    What would be considered a good CRI for a weapon light? I've never heard that term before.
    I have no idea. Some digging on CPF showed that apparently some of the SureFire handhelds oriented toward tactical use have a CRI of 65, which is about normal for most LEDs, but also not very good CRI. My EDC I specifically wanted high CRI, IIRC the card it came with metered it at around 93 CRI.

    FYI, CRI is Color Rendering Index, and is a scale from 0 to 100 to show how accurately the light will show colors in comparison to natural lighting. So, a high CRI light illuminating a scene will more closely match the same scene being illuminated by sunlight.

    As for the temperature side of things, cooler lights do allow for more perceived contrast in whatever you light up, but at the same time, the human brain processes a warm image slightly faster. Or so I've been told, no idea how true these claims are.
    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

    老僧三十年前未參禪時、見山是山、見水是水、及至後夾親見知識、有箇入處、見山不是山、見水不是水、而今得箇體歇處、依然見山秪是山、見水秪是水。

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  5. #15
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    Another factor to consider, the blue spectrum of light temperature is also perceived to be more 'painful' than the warmer spectrum. Quick example, going back to the foglight observation, ever drive by someone with bluish/purplish hue LED headlights and catch yourself wincing away far more than regular temperature headlights?

    Between Kelvin temperature pros and cons for each end of the spectrum, and the CRI using sunlight as the standard, I would think ~4500K would be the best do all temperature?

  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by ColtSeavers View Post
    Another factor to consider, the blue spectrum of light temperature is also perceived to be more 'painful' than the warmer spectrum. Quick example, going back to the foglight observation, ever drive by someone with bluish/purplish hue LED headlights and catch yourself wincing away far more than regular temperature headlights?

    Between Kelvin temperature pros and cons for each end of the spectrum, and the CRI using sunlight as the standard, I would think ~4500K would be the best do all temperature?
    So, that's another interesting factor. Studio lights are usually 3200K or a little higher for good reason. But what's starting to kind of materialize for me in this discussion is that you can optimize a weapon light for either detection indoor without optical barriers, outdoor with fog/rain/foliage, or for blinding effects. That's in addition to focus (floody vs hotspot coverage).

    The following is just my conjecture.

    So, if you were to optimize for outdoors with foliage if you had a large wooded property, you might want something in the upper range of the warm tones, very high CRI (90 or higher?), tighter hotspot for longer throw.

    Indoor optimized weapon light might be 4500-5000K and floody for maximum room coverage while maintaining perception of brightness due to color temperature.

    Blinding would be bright white-blue, 5500 or higher kelvin with a tight hotspot.

  7. #17
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    When we talk about color rendering, remember that an individual LED produces light in a very narrow range, but many other types of light emitting devices don’t. So, a (non-LED) bulb labeled as 5500k might have most of the light produced be 5500k, but is also producing significant amounts of light from 2700k to 6000k. So the way we perceive colors with LED lighting will be different than natural light no matter what. My personal preference is for light to be on the blue end. Reddish light always looks dim to me, even if the output is awesome. It works, of course. I just don’t prefer the way it looks.

  8. #18
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    I prefer a warmer light temp due to the better color rendition. Blue lights distort color and like mentioned previously seem to hit a target and stop there. Looking past it is harder than a warmer color.

    An easy test is to try looking at small multi colored wires in a dark environment with very blue light. Some colors are hard to differentiate between each other.

    If you go warmer, you do need more lumens in relation to a bluer temp, but in this day and age, that isn't really a problem.

    Here is an example:

    This is of a PL-2 Valkyrie pistol light. This light is not blue at all - more of a neutral color - it uses a CREE XHP 35 HI Neutral White LED (@5000K). You can make out colors pretty well and those trees in the back of the foliage it is hitting first still can be seen fairly well, even though it is hitting the branches at @15" away, the fence at a 100', the initial foliage at 110' and then the tress in the background at a 150'. You can see the depth, and the color rendition seems pretty decent - until you look at an even warmer led.




    Here is an even warmer color. This from a custom built light from Skylumen.com. The light is way brighter than the picture suggests. You can see the camera has compensated for that with faster shutter speeds due to the completely black ring around the outside of the pic. It lights up the fence pretty well even though the pic doesn't look like it does. As you can see though with this color, the branches in the foreground, the fence, the foliage, and the trees, have even better color rendition than the previous neutral temp pic. The hot spot area isn't as good as it could be because this light is just too powerful at these distances and the hot spot is washing things out a bit even at 150', but you can still see what the difference in color rendition is.

    Last edited by Adrenaline_6; 09-03-20 at 08:22.

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by mig1nc View Post
    So, that's another interesting factor. Studio lights are usually 3200K or a little higher for good reason. But what's starting to kind of materialize for me in this discussion is that you can optimize a weapon light for either detection indoor without optical barriers, outdoor with fog/rain/foliage, or for blinding effects. That's in addition to focus (floody vs hotspot coverage).

    The following is just my conjecture.

    So, if you were to optimize for outdoors with foliage if you had a large wooded property, you might want something in the upper range of the warm tones, very high CRI (90 or higher?), tighter hotspot for longer throw.

    Indoor optimized weapon light might be 4500-5000K and floody for maximum room coverage while maintaining perception of brightness due to color temperature.

    Blinding would be bright white-blue, 5500 or higher kelvin with a tight hotspot.
    You usually don't see CRI discussed on tactical lights because no effort has been made to educate the consumers of that product on what it means. At a certain point, you're just throwing meaningless figures at people who "just want a bright light to identify friend or foe and temporarily reduce the foe's ability to harm them".

    When you get into the geek side of things, CRI comes into play and yes, it is important. If you look at a light I have sourced from the geek side of lighting, you'll find you can customize it specifically for your needs. https://intl-outdoor.com/emisar-d4sv2.html

    You can choose from no less than 7 different emitters for just this light. Notice they give lumen and candela for each emitter, but only list CRI for one because if accurate color rendering is critical to you, you really want that one.

    XP-G2 S4 : 3300lm / 40,000cd
    Nichia 219C : 3000lm / 20,000cd
    XP-L HI : 4300lm / 45,000cd
    XP-L HD : 5100lm / 27,000cd
    SST-20 6500K: 4200lm / 58,000cd
    SST-20 5000K: 4000lm / 55,000cd
    SST-20 4000K/3000K 95CRI: 3000lm / 41,000cd

    And that's just the emitter. They let you spec your fuel based on whether you need power, run time or a balance of the two. Then these guys will literally take a light apart and examine every last detail of it, then post highly technical information on what amounts to a $40 light. You literally have to go educate yourself on each aspect to understand what looks like a foreign language, but it's worth it if you want to know you're getting the absolute best light for your specific needs.

    http://budgetlightforum.com/node/55306

    Would it be nice if companies like Surefire, Streamlight, Inforce, Olight etc. published this? Absolutely. Part of the reason they don't is so they can avoid "light firepower" wars. The other reason is they don't want to give away proprietary information.

    Tl;Dr: I went with 5000K for indoors and urban use, and 4000K for outdoors, woods. My eyes are older and the warmest color rendering (usually 3000K - 4000K) just doesn't provide enough illumination for me to see definition well.
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  10. #20
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    This is a great thread, lots of good info!

    Ended up waking up in the wee hours this morning, and since I coulddn't get back to sleep, I decided to temp fate and play with my WMLs in the backyard.

    To my eyes at 0400...
    Malkoff e1ht and e2xt heads have the coolest kelvin, just before blue sky.
    Streamlight HL-X has a pretty close to neutral or direct sunlight kelvin.
    Surefire M600DF has the warmest kelvin.

    Also realized that my Arisaka 300 w/e1ht head, while having an amazing throw for such a little light, is really lacking for inside the house, out in the backyard or across the street duties IMO. Just not enough flood for those ranges and uses, you have to 'hunt' too much with the light.

    So, I'll be switching it out for a Surefire M300C on my pistol build. I'll also enjoy the warmer kelvin.
    Last edited by ColtSeavers; 09-02-20 at 23:17.

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