# A sad incandescent day today



## ampdude (Jan 14, 2013)

Had my car in the shop this afternoon so I walked across the street to the mall to kill some time. Stopped in at Scheels mostly to check out if any flashlights were on sale. Almost every Surefire accessory was gone except for an MN01 lamp and an F05 E-series red filter. Picked those both up since you can't have too many red filters.. haha and I have an E1e without a lamp. Was saddened to realize none of that stuff will be replaced and I bought the last E-series lamp (and last Surefire incan lamp) from Scheels that they will probably ever stock again. :shakehead Shouldn't be a big deal, but I'm just kind of bummed out about that. Also saw that Target was nearly out of incan Maglites, and none of those are likely to be replaced. Especially the Solitaires and Minimags.

Scheels had a bunch of the "new" crappy line of SF's in the display case, that basically all look the same and they had a few incan G2's for $59.99. And batteries... And a bunch of overpriced LED Streamlights.

On the bright side my E1e has a new lamp and it's a joy to use.


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## scout24 (Jan 14, 2013)

Had a similar experience at a local Gander Mountain sporting goods store a few weeks ago: they have a locked display cabinet of SF lights, apart from the blister packed cheapo stuff on the hang racks. It had been picked through, but I picked up a G3 (last one) for 27.99. Once it's empty, that's it for SF incan from that particular store...


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## TEEJ (Jan 14, 2013)

I can't find whale oil for my old lamps anymore either.


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## ampdude (Jan 14, 2013)

TEEJ said:


> I can't find whale oil for my old lamps anymore either.



I'm pretty sure you're not looking hard enough because they still make whales.


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## n2stuff (Jan 14, 2013)

TEEJ said:


> I can't find whale oil for my old lamps anymore either.





ampdude said:


> I'm pretty sure you're not looking hard enough because they still make whales.



OMG
I shot soda out my nose
Thanks you guys I needed a laugh:laughing:


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## ampdude (Jan 14, 2013)

No problem. I'm here at random times, I'm part of the Candlepower forums comedian battalion. (no not really)


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## LEDAdd1ct (Jan 15, 2013)

Thanks, ampdude.


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## DaveG (Jan 16, 2013)

Good one, guys!


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## argleargle (Jan 16, 2013)

I went shopping locally for a few shiny new Maglite bodies to mutilate... er... I mean... modify. Couldn't find any on a shelf? Are the big stores moving away from incan Mags? Is the writing on the wall for incans?

...think I should buy up some incan mags whilst still available? I need to build a 0cell Mag, a Mag85, and require plenty of parts to ruin on my lathe since I've got shaky hands.

Anyone with thoughts on what the "new mod host body" will be, or is it just P60-compatible from here on out?


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## broadgage (Jan 18, 2013)

I suspect that incan Maglights will be available for some years yet.
Many smaller or less busy retailers will have old stock, and there must be a lot of incan Maglights hidden away that will be sold via ebay etc.

But yes the writing is on the wall for incans. I suspect they will go the way of gaslights, carbon filament lamps and oil lamps, all of which are still used today but are not exactly popular or mainstream light sources.


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## ampdude (Jan 21, 2013)

I went crazy and bought a bunch of incan Minimags today. Was mostly a crime of opportunity since my car was back in the shop today and I really wanted to find all the gunmetal gray ones left that I could. I suspect the incan C and especially 2D/3D Mags will be around for awhile yet, but I don't expect the Minimags to last much longer. I could be wrong though........

And I was back in Scheels today and no they didn't restock anything.  It's all gone.


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## argleargle (Jan 21, 2013)

broadgage said:


> But yes the writing is on the wall for incans. I suspect they will go the way of gaslights, carbon filament lamps and oil lamps, all of which are still used today but are not exactly popular or mainstream light sources.



Oh okay. You mean, then that they will be the domain of the enthusiasts, the hobbyists, and... oh yeah..._* US.*_

Ah! Excellent. I was right in buying up some incan mag bodies in all flavors such that we can continue to enjoy our flavor.
_*
GOOD!*_ I hate it when I'm wrong on purpose!


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## fyrstormer (Jan 21, 2013)

Flashlight manufacturers love LEDs. Incan bulbs are fragile and burn out on a regular basis, meaning the manufacturers have to pack thousands of tiny little replacement lightbulbs in (relatively) very expensive individual blister packs. LEDs are nearly indestructible and will last about as long as the user cares to use them, and the heatsinking requirement means they're not easily replaceable anyway, so the manufacturer only has to have one product line -- complete pre-assembled lights. That reduces overhead costs dramatically.

You might think they could use the "give away the razor and make money on the blades" business model, but unlike razors, bulbs don't wear out *quite* often enough to make that practical. Not to mention there's a significant market for inexpensive third-party bulbs, since the bulbs (even if not the housings) are pretty much all based on old standard sizes, making it nearly impossible to patent a bulb design to protect ye olde profit margin.

There are a lot of purely financial reasons why flashlight manufacturers would want to switch to LED for all and for good.


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## argleargle (Jan 21, 2013)

Update: We need a valid supply of hotwire bulbs for mag bodies! Crap. I bought the wrong stuff *AGAIN!*


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## 2xTrinity (Jan 28, 2013)

My last camping trip I got kinda sad when I realized the only incan left in my collection -- a multi-level hotwire (64611 driven by w/ 3 26650s in a 4C mag) which used to destroy every LED light on the market for overall luminous output in '07 when I built it -- was actually producing less light than my buddy's much smaller 4Sevens Maelstrom S12 .

I got the last laugh though as we all radically underdressed for the weather and my light still doubled as a highly effective hand warmer


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## dudemar (Jan 31, 2013)

The incan Minimag will be around for a very long time. The LED version has been out for years and it's still about $20. People can't justify spending that much for a little light, so there will always be a market for the $7 incan.


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## LuxLuthor (Feb 15, 2013)

Those of us who took the time to try out and use various incan combinations vs. other light sources understand that there are plenty of applications and preferences to match and appreciate a wide diversity of lighting types. The lifeless obsession with lumen per watt efficiency ignores the romantic artistry of halogen & tungsten magical illumination. Go watch the Blu-Ray remastered edition of the Godfather movies, paying attention to the effect of the lighting. It is a whole other character in Coppola's masterpiece trilogy. They ain't using LED's for those effects.


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## ampdude (Feb 15, 2013)

You had me until you used the word "romantic" in describing our obsession.


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## SemiMan (Feb 16, 2013)

dudemar said:


> The incan Minimag will be around for a very long time. The LED version has been out for years and it's still about $20. People can't justify spending that much for a little light, so there will always be a market for the $7 incan.



I suspect it is far more likely they will buy the $5.00 no name or $10.00 Rayovac LED flashlight and pass on the Minimag incan completely. Even that no name one will be brighter with much longer battery life and when you think reliability, i.e. the light turning on, the much lower battery draw and lack of a short life filament bulb likely still means the cheapy is more reliable.


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## idleprocess (Feb 16, 2013)

The glory days of the incandescent flashlight are gone. The technology has peaked in terms of performance with LED filling in most of the market. 

CPF members often fail to appreciate that the general market just needs a flashlight for occasional utility lighting and emergencies, thus will go with whatever's on store shelves and offers whatever minimal combination of performance and features on the package they're willing to pay for. Looking at the packaging for consumer- and construction-grade flashlights, it would seem that consumers greatly value not having to replace bulbs, brightness, are interested in drop/dunk-resistance, and pay some attention to runtime. Above all, $10 seems to be a common bar for a junk drawer flashlight and $20 is the general limit for a jobsite type flashlight.

Sure, bulbs are cheap, readily replaceable, and the single most common failure element in an incandescent flashlight ... but it annoyed consumers to have to replace them. They did seem to fail quite often at inopportune times: the junk drawer scenario of pulling an almost never-used flashlight with nearly dead cells (probably cheap "Heavy Duty" cells at that) only to have the bulb flash as it draws more current than usual might be well-understood by most of us, but was thoroughly detested by consumers.

I imagine the common bulbs will be available for some time. The PR bases and anything mag-lite makes will be safe as will bulbs for SF or Streamlight models that cost decent money and/or were used across multiple models.

I should source some G2's and a few P60 bulbs...



fyrstormer said:


> Flashlight manufacturers love LEDs. Incan bulbs are fragile and burn out on a regular basis, meaning the manufacturers have to pack thousands of tiny little replacement lightbulbs in (relatively) very expensive individual blister packs. LEDs are nearly indestructible and will last about as long as the user cares to use them, and the heatsinking requirement means they're not easily replaceable anyway, so the manufacturer only has to have one product line -- complete pre-assembled lights. That reduces overhead costs dramatically.


Flashlight manufacturers do not sell bulbs as a public service - they wouldn't be producing them if they didn't make something on them (or at least somehow contribute to staying afloat). Much like how light bulb manufacturers raked in profit manufacturing Edison-socket incandescent light bulbs for home use at $0.50/each, flashlight manufacturers made even _more_ profit making far smaller DC bulbs with a fraction of the materials for similar (or more) prices per bulb. Their volumes were lower, but replacement bulbs were profitable for them - especially proprietary models like the mini-maglite xenon bulbs and other proprietary high-performance incans such as SF, Streamlight, etc.



fyrstormer said:


> There are a lot of purely financial reasons why flashlight manufacturers would want to switch to LED for all and for good.


If you want to sell new flashlights, LED's were great since they offered longer runtimes and - after we got past Lumileds holding the exclusive on "power LED's" - only marginally more expensive for _more lumens_. Consumers were becoming dimly aware of the fact that LED's ran for a long time and lasted (in flashlight terms) forever. Thus, Inova et al started taking "premium" shelf space from Mag-Lite in places like Target as they offered innovative _(to consumers anyway)_ new designs.


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## tomfruit (Feb 16, 2013)

Sorry If this is going a bit off track, but Ive wondered for a while (Im a newbie to flashaholicism you see, so im not that knowledgeable.. yet!) what are the pros and cons of LED and incandescent flashlights? Everytime I google it, it seems people say that LED are better on every front, but im convinced there must be something incandescent bulbs are better for.


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## JCD (Feb 16, 2013)

tomfruit said:


> Sorry If this is going a bit off track, but Ive wondered for a while (Im a newbie to flashaholicism you see, so im not that knowledgeable.. yet!) what are the pros and cons of LED and incandescent flashlights? Everytime I google it, it seems people say that LED are better on every front, but im convinced there must be something incandescent bulbs are better for.



LEDs provide a greater quantity of light and/or greater runtime than incan lights. Incans, OTOH, provide higher quality light. The light from incans is broad spectrum light, meaning that it contains light of many different colors that combine to appear white. Light from an LED contain a (comparably) limited number of colors which also combine to appear white.

When we use lights to illuminate an object, that object absorbs all the light but a very limited number of colors. If those colors are not contained in the light from our flashlight, then it will not be reflected back. With LEDs, there is a good chance that those colors are not present in the light from the emitter, especially outdoors in natural environments. That means there isn't anything to be reflected back. With incans, the colors _are_ present in the light from the lamp, so it can be reflected back at us. Consequently, incans are _far_ better at showing the details (e.g., colors and textures) that can remain hidden when we use LED lights.

Depending on ones needs and environment, there might be no benefit to using an incan, or it might make a huge difference. A rule of thumb is that an LED light needs to be twice as bright as an incan light for the same usefulness. It's not a very useful rule, though, since it depends so much on environment. In urban areas, there is little benefit to using incans. In the great outdoors, a small incan light can easily show details that even much more powerful LEDs won't show.

High CRI (Color Rendering Index) LEDs help mitigate the problem of low quality light from LEDs, but they don't solve the problem. They are still inferior to incans in that respect. Also, don't confuse color temperature with color rendering. They are two separate things, High CRI LEDs tend to be warm(ish), but not all warm LEDs are high CRI emitters. (You didn't make this mistake, but it is a common one.)


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## cerbie (Feb 16, 2013)

tomfruit said:


> Sorry If this is going a bit off track, but Ive wondered for a while (Im a newbie to flashaholicism you see, so im not that knowledgeable.. yet!) what are the pros and cons of LED and incandescent flashlights? Everytime I google it, it seems people say that LED are better on every front, but im convinced there must be something incandescent bulbs are better for.


See if you can find a G2 at a trade store, sports/outdoors store, or gun store. Yes, a plain old G2, because it will be cheaper than a 6P. Try it out. Notice how subtle details in trees, and on the ground, just _pop out_. That's not even a great example, either, being all red-orange. Then go get a LED drop-in for it, to make it worth having been bought. :devil:

I'm all for LED, but even I can admit that even the FOTY Nichias even have a little ways to go. But, if you were a flashlight company, you would do well to realize that equivalence is a near-future concern, and a good many customers either don't care, or will take the trade-offs with ~70 CRI cool white flashlights. So, none of this should be surprising.

Whatever ones-up the current Nichias will likely be good enough to match incans for smoke and fog (as opposed to the occasional flashlight throwing more blue lumens at that problem as a solution), at which point incandescent portable lights will start to become truly esoteric. At that point, total output will be about all incans will have left. But, that's probably a few years off, and then it will take another few years to spread across the market(s).


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## mesa232323 (Feb 16, 2013)

Incan = Muscle car era 
LED = small efficient turbo charged engine. 

Incan = Hotrod, big bulb, lots of batteries = COOL!!!
LED = Everyday use EDC

LED's can take over, and I feel its okay. Incans will be harder to find but will eventually be reserved for 1185 and 623 type conversions (hotrod) which has such a cool factor. I myself have a 623 which is the only light I show off to my buddies torching newpaper.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 16, 2013)

cerbie said:


> See if you can find a G2 at a trade store, sports/outdoors store, or gun store. Yes, a plain old G2, because it will be cheaper than a 6P. Try it out. Notice how subtle details in trees, and on the ground, just _pop out_. That's not even a great example, either, being all red-orange. Then go get a LED drop-in for it, to make it worth having been bought. :devil:


Ultimately, seeing is about having objects reflect light back to you. Obviously, if the spectrum is deficient in the same colors which need to be reflected back, you will see less. That said, for any given amount of power LEDs can throw five to ten times the amount of light at an object. Even if they might somewhat less red in their spectrum, you could end up having just as much light reflected back at you. Also, outside of nature (and then only sometimes) a red-biased spectrum usually isn't better.



> I'm all for LED, but even I can admit that even the FOTY Nichias even have a little ways to go. But, if you were a flashlight company, you would do well to realize that equivalence is a near-future concern, and a good many customers either don't care, or will take the trade-offs with ~70 CRI cool white flashlights. So, none of this should be surprising.


I personally think the Nichia 219s make up for the deficiencies of both incandescents and "regular" LEDs. There is enough red in the spectrum to distinguish most red/orange/brown objects. There are also enough shorter wavelengths to distinguish greens, blues, and violets. It's a notable failing of incandescent that dark blue or green appears indistinguishable from black unless the light level is really high.

And yes, the majority of customers don't notice or care about color or CRI, unless it's really bad. Gone are the days of very purple or blue or green LEDs. As long as it's reasonably white and works, most people are satisified.




> Whatever ones-up the current Nichias will likely be good enough to match incans for smoke and fog (as opposed to the occasional flashlight throwing more blue lumens at that problem as a solution), at which point incandescent portable lights will start to become truly esoteric. At that point, total output will be about all incans will have left. But, that's probably a few years off, and then it will take another few years to spread across the market(s).


Haven't LEDs already exceeded the total output of most incandescents (at least those with reasonable battery life)? There may be some incandescents which put out more lumens, but they also drain a large battery dry in 5 or 10 minutes.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 16, 2013)

idleprocess said:


> Sure, bulbs are cheap, readily replaceable, and the single most common failure element in an incandescent flashlight ... but it annoyed consumers to have to replace them. They did seem to fail quite often at inopportune times: the junk drawer scenario of pulling an almost never-used flashlight with nearly dead cells (probably cheap "Heavy Duty" cells at that) only to have the bulb flash as it draws more current than usual might be well-understood by most of us, but was thoroughly detested by consumers.


Before the days of LED flashlights, most people considered flashlights unreliable, which is why they didn't buy them until after an emergency happened. They figured why bother, it won't work when I need it to anyway. As you say, either the batteries would be dead/leaking, or the lamp would blow at the most inopportune time. Granted, we had nothing better than incans at the time, so people just had to make due. If you had to ask me what the single greatest thing about LEDs is, I would say the reliability more than the efficiency. Efficiency is great in that you get more lumens or more runtime or both, but the idea that you buy a light which will likely still work just fine if you live to be 100 is truly revolutionary. Sure, in practice with cheaply made drivers it doesn't always work out that way, but most of the time it does. I never bothered much with portable lighting until LEDs came along because it required too much effort to keep a few lights working. Batteries at the time for the most part stunk. And you could have a light working great, then poof, instaflash. If you didn't have a spare bulb handy, it's another trip to the store plus a few dollars. Then of course as the batteries ran down the bulb faded from yellow to a useless dim orange. Runtime wasn't all that great, either. Like I said, more hassle than it was worth. The comparison of incans to muscle cars is very apt. Those old muscle cars might be great the rare times you had them tuned perfectly but they were very finicky. Slightly different fuel and everything went to hell. Sometimes everything just went to hell anyway for no apparent reason. LED just _works_ without all the fuss or drama. A more apt comparison might be LED = electric car. Simple, reliable, little to go wrong, and can even sometimes out accelerate the muscle car. When you match battery voltage you don't even need a driver circuit. As much as I like to tinker sometimes, I expect once I have everything working optimally it'll stay that way for good, not break when it feels like it.


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## cerbie (Feb 16, 2013)

jtr1962 said:


> Haven't LEDs already exceeded the total output of most incandescents (at least those with reasonable battery life)?


Remove those parenthesis, and the word most, then re-read it.


> There may be some incandescents which put out more lumens, but they also drain a large battery dry in 5 or 10 minutes.


Yes, but do you want to see what you are pointing _at_, or what you are pointing _into_? Anything but the best high-CRI emitters will do little in fog, FI, but make the cool-looking light shaft you see in TV and movies (not that I've done that lately, with the cold and wet weather ). I don't carry incans, and only own incans that I haven't taken the time to convert (1 empty G2 that could take a lamp and be turned back into one, and 2 Minimags), but more blue won't solve the problem that there isn't enough of orange, yellow, or green.

Some LEDs today are >=95% of the way there, namely the Nichias, _and also have other benefits, from being LEDs_. This is the incan forum, and I'm comparing on an assumption that the downsides of incans are already acceptable, for the comparison (clearly the case for those that frequent this forum, rather than happen to read the occasional thread in it). When it comes to the total package, except maybe for small-niche specialized uses, even Luxeon Is had it all over incans, _IMO_. I was very much a non-lover of flashlights due to the characteristics of common incandescent flashlights.

Once they take a little step farther, that'll be it. As soon as Nichia isn't the only mass producer of >4k CCT >90 CRI LEDs, it will be time to finally start putting the nails in the coffin. I don't just mean here, either. People _out there_ know they don't like LEDs for XYZ, or can't effectively use them for XYZ (I've opined elsewhere about SF and SL having golden chances, now, and missing the boat). Much like how the market exploded once Phillips wasn't the only company making white power LEDs, there's a hole waiting to be filled, but it's going to be slow with only a single supplier, especially one that knows they have premium technology nobody else does. And, IMO, it would happen even quicker, if the competitor could outdo Nichia, rather than just match them.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 16, 2013)

cerbie said:


> When it comes to the total package, except maybe for small-niche specialized uses, even Luxeon Is had it all over incans, _IMO_. I was very much a non-lover of flashlights due to the characteristics of common incandescent flashlights.


I'll go one step further. When I got my hands on my first white LEDs back in 2000 or 2001 (5mm Nichias) I said one day these will take over the world. The Luxeon Is you mention had it all over incans for most uses other than price. Now price for decent emitters has finally dropped to about what one would pay for a decent flashlight replacement lamp.

And yes, I was also very much a non-lover of any form of portable lights due to the characteristics of incandescents. Now I totally get it how those who frequent this forum find incans powerful enough to set paper on fire cool (so do I) but those are a different league from the consumer garbage which caused my disdain for portable lighting. I used to call them one-use lights because that's seemingly all they were ever good for.



> Once they take a little step farther, that'll be it. As soon as Nichia isn't the only mass producer of >4k CCT >90 CRI LEDs, it will be time to finally start putting the nails in the coffin. I don't just mean here, either. People _out there_ know they don't like LEDs for XYZ, or can't effectively use them for XYZ (I've opined elsewhere about SF and SL having golden chances, now, and missing the boat). Much like how the market exploded once Phillips wasn't the only company making white power LEDs, there's a hole waiting to be filled, but it's going to be slow with only a single supplier, especially one that knows they have premium technology nobody else does. And, IMO, it would happen even quicker, if the competitor could outdo Nichia, rather than just match them.


Yep. First one to make a 4000K to 5000K emitter with >95 CRI, decent efficiency, and competitive price will seal the deal here. As it is I rarely see incan flashlights in most stores these days. I'll bet they're mostly old inventory which hasn't sold yet.

I don't see incan ever going away completely as there are certain niche uses for it (i.e. operation in very high temperature environments, or cases where you need light plus IR heat), but for average consumer portable lighting needs LEDs have already taken over.


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## LuxLuthor (Feb 16, 2013)

It's funny how the same people ("LED Jockeys") who have always disliked incands keep finding reasons thread after thread, post after post, month after month, year after year, to come into this section of the forum and use the same boring assertions to announce the death and obsolescence of incandescent lighting. It's like they can't stand people having the freedom to enjoy a particular type of technology for various applications (beyond setting paper on fire) for as long as they want to use it.


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## Imon (Feb 17, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> It's funny how the same people ("LED Jockeys") who have always disliked incands keep finding reasons thread after thread, post after post, month after month, year after year, to come into this section of the forum and use the same boring assertions to announce the death and obsolescence of incandescent lighting. It's like they can't stand people having the freedom to enjoy a particular type of technology for various applications (beyond setting paper on fire) for as long as they want to use it.



Yeah, I don't see the point in restating the unpopularity of incandescent lights. Honestly this forum has been fairly dead for some years now.

Funny thing, recently I connected my bedside lamp to a dimmable switch and I found myself digging through a closet to find an old incandescent bulb. :laughing:
CFL and LED bulbs just either don't dim low enough or look ugly at low output. Guess I'll be using incandescent bulbs in that lamp from now on. :candle:


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## idleprocess (Feb 17, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> It's funny how the same people ("LED Jockeys") who have always disliked incands keep finding reasons thread after thread, post after post, month after month, year after year, to come into this section of the forum and use the same boring assertions to announce the death and obsolescence of incandescent lighting. It's like they can't stand people having the freedom to enjoy a particular type of technology for various applications (beyond setting paper on fire) for as long as they want to use it.



Speaking for myself, I caught this clicking on "What's New", read it, and responded to it without noting the particular subforum. I believe with this post I will have a total of two in this subforum.

Extract utility and enjoyment from your hotwires - doesn't really affect me one way or the other.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 17, 2013)

idleprocess said:


> Extract utility and enjoyment from your hotwires - doesn't really affect me one way or the other.


My sentiments exactly.

And I happened to find this thread interesting for the simple reason I noticed the lack of incandescent flashlights in stores recently. It's been literally years since I've posted in this section for the simple reason I didn't find any of the threads relevant to my experiences. I don't post much in the LED flashlight section, either, for that matter, as my main interest here tends to be in general lighting.


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## cerbie (Feb 17, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> It's funny how the same people ("LED Jockeys") who have always disliked incands keep finding reasons thread after thread, post after post, month after month, year after year, to come into this section of the forum and use the same boring assertions to announce the death and obsolescence of incandescent lighting.


Like using the forum software to see what's going on, and noticing an interesting thread title?



> It's like they can't stand people having the freedom to enjoy a particular type of technology for various applications (beyond setting paper on fire) for as long as they want to use it.


No one's trying to get in the way of your enjoyment. We're interested in getting work done with them, too.



Imon said:


> Funny thing, recently I connected my bedside lamp to a dimmable switch and I found myself digging through a closet to find an old incandescent bulb. :laughing:
> CFL and LED bulbs just either don't dim low enough or look ugly at low output. Guess I'll be using incandescent bulbs in that lamp from now on. :candle:


For now, you'll basically have to make your own whole lamp, for that. Or, replace it with a battery-powered lamp. I doubt CFLs will ever do well enough, and LEDs will take many more years of one-chip-to-rule-the-board ICs, along with you replacing your dimmers, before they'll beat an over-driven low-wattage bulb for a room lamp. Well, provided your bulb of choice doesn't get regulated out of the market, anyway.

I've been thinking of making one with 6V or 12V lamps, actually, specifically as a low-light bedside lamp, but never seem to get around to buying parts.


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## fyrstormer (Feb 18, 2013)

JCD said:


> LEDs provide a greater quantity of light and/or greater runtime than incan lights. Incans, OTOH, provide higher quality light. The light from incans is broad spectrum light, meaning that it contains light of many different colors that combine to appear white. Light from an LED contain a (comparably) limited number of colors which also combine to appear white.
> 
> High CRI (Color Rendering Index) LEDs help mitigate the problem of low quality light from LEDs, but they don't solve the problem. They are still inferior to incans in that respect. Also, don't confuse color temperature with color rendering. They are two separate things, High CRI LEDs tend to be warm(ish), but not all warm LEDs are high CRI emitters. (You didn't make this mistake, but it is a common one.)


That information was accurate as of about 3 years ago. LEDs have improved immensely since then.

Also, keep in mind that the Color Rendering Index only compares the light source in question to a hot-body light source with a similar tint. Technically speaking, the orange glow from molten lava is 100% CRI as well, but nobody would be able to stand having light with no blue component as their home light source. All incandescent light sources suffer from that same fundamental problem: in order to produce light that *human* eyes would consider high-quality, they have to get dangerously hot. Essentially, incandescent bulbs are very efficient space-heaters that produce some visible light as a byproduct.

I don't think there even are any incandescent lightbulbs that can achieve a higher color temperature than maybe 3500K, so for people who don't favor seeing everything in sunset-tinted light all night long, there has *never* been any good option for them until now. (I think we can all agree that fluorescent lights were lacking in quality for most of their existence, since they also use white-phosphor technology which has only recently been heavily-researched, so they weren't really a "good" option for people who like cooler-tinted light until recently either.) So, to say that incandescent light is "just better for seeing" (which seems to be your opinion, in a nutshell) is patently false. Incan light has always given me headaches and I'm glad to be rid of it.


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## fyrstormer (Feb 18, 2013)

Imon said:


> Funny thing, recently I connected my bedside lamp to a dimmable switch and I found myself digging through a closet to find an old incandescent bulb. :laughing:
> CFL and LED bulbs just either don't dim low enough or look ugly at low output. Guess I'll be using incandescent bulbs in that lamp from now on. :candle:


I can't post a sales link, but go on Amazon and search for "Philips AmbientLED 12.5W". They look goofy but they work great. I've been using them for a couple years now and I have no regrets.


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## JCD (Feb 18, 2013)

fyrstormer said:


> That information was accurate as of about 3 years ago. LEDs have improved immensely since then.



Yes, LEDs have improved significantly in the past three years, but they still have a _long_ way to go before they can match the light quality of incans. I have no doubt they will eventually get there, but they aren't there yet. Broad spectrum light still has inherent advantages.


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## Scotsman1886 (Feb 18, 2013)

I'm new around here but have a thought. I remember when the Maglite was "it". The minimag was on everyones tool belt and we were amazed at how bright it was for such a small light. I still love them. I have used a streamlight sl-20(several variants) for most og my 20 years as a uniformed Police Officer and those had a way of "slicing" through the dark like a knife. 

All the great advances in LED will be overshadowed by the "cheep/free" harbor frieght etc LED lights and ifthose are the consumers only exposure to the LED, they will want those quality incan lights.

IMHO


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## jtr1962 (Feb 19, 2013)

fyrstormer said:


> I don't think there even are any incandescent lightbulbs that can achieve a higher color temperature than maybe 3500K, so for people who don't favor seeing everything in sunset-tinted light all night long, there has *never* been any good option for them until now. (I think we can all agree that fluorescent lights were lacking in quality for most of their existence, since they also use white-phosphor technology which has only recently been heavily-researched, so they weren't really a "good" option for people who like cooler-tinted light until recently either.) So, to say that incandescent light is "just better for seeing" (which seems to be your opinion, in a nutshell) is patently false. Incan light has always given me headaches and I'm glad to be rid of it.


I agree wholeheartedly, especially with the first and last sentences. It's only recently that we've finally had high-CCT, high quality options for lighting thanks to LEDs. Even the higher-CRI fluorescent options still have a pretty spiky spectrum.



> I can't post a sales link, but go on Amazon and search for "Philips AmbientLED 12.5W". They look goofy but they work great. I've been using them for a couple years now and I have no regrets.



Do those come in non-2700K options? Lots of nice LEDs bulbs out there now, but unfortunately the vast majority are trying to mimic incandescent.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 19, 2013)

JCD said:


> Yes, LEDs have improved significantly in the past three years, but they still have a _long_ way to go before they can match the light quality of incans. I have no doubt they will eventually get there, but they aren't there yet. Broad spectrum light still has inherent advantages.


Look at LEDs like the Xicato Artist series. The spectrum is pretty much indistinguishable from a broad spectrum source. I doubt if even an expert would be able to tell the difference. LEDs _are_ broad spectrum sources, albeit some have a few humps and valleys in the spectrum (easily corrected with the addition of a little cyan and red).


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## T-Steve (Feb 19, 2013)

I mourn for the simplicity of incandescents - batteries and bulbs. No drivers, ICs, PCBs, regulators, over/underdrives.

One thing I really like about incandescents: When they are off, they are OFF. It seems like many LED flashlights have a little bit of circuitry ON when they are OFF.

Will it be like the tube amplifiers? After a while the only tubes are available from a few Russian and Chinese specialty factories?


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## LGT (Feb 22, 2013)

What's new and relevant changes. The day will come when cree emitters are obsolete, and what replaces those will become obsolete.Don't despair in what has become a thing of the past. Grab on to the future of what some nice emitters are becoming.


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## cerbie (Feb 22, 2013)

T-Steve said:


> I mourn for the simplicity of incandescents - batteries and bulbs. No drivers, ICs, PCBs, regulators, over/underdrives.


ICs might have been rare, and regulated expensive, but PCBs aren't uncommon, and you can get LED torches w/o them. Also, under and over driving have been common to do for a very, very, long time.



> One thing I really like about incandescents: When they are off, they are OFF. It seems like many LED flashlights have a little bit of circuitry ON when they are OFF.


Just some fancy ones. It's equally easy to get them with proper off modes.



> Will it be like the tube amplifiers? After a while the only tubes are available from a few Russian and Chinese specialty factories?


For replacement bulbs for COTS flashlights? Absolutely. Beyond that, I doubt much will change. Much of the modding going on here won't be affected, the hosts will still be plentiful, and certain bulb form factors are going to be around for a very long time, even if the box won't say Streamlight, Surefire, or Mag Instrument. Given how the internet allows niche markets to not need to be too time-consuming and expensive for the consumer, it won't be nearly that bad.

In fact, tube amps have had quite a resurgence over the last decade or so, much thanks to people being able to source parts much more easily than in the days between solid state's take-over and the web.



LGT said:


> What's new and relevant changes. The day will come when cree emitters are obsolete, and what replaces those will become obsolete.Don't despair in what has become a thing of the past. Grab on to the future of what some nice emitters are becoming.


Also, don't get rid of what works, even if it may be old, just because there's newer. The makers follow what they think the market wants, which also means a slim minority of users with good reasons for not wanting the new thing may be left in the cold.


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## think2x (Feb 23, 2013)

TEEJ said:


> I can't find whale oil for my old lamps anymore either.





ampdude said:


> I'm pretty sure you're not looking hard enough because they still make whales.





n2stuff said:


> OMG
> I shot soda out my nose
> Thanks you guys I needed a laugh:laughing:



I almost choked on my burger! great stuff!


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## LuxLuthor (Feb 23, 2013)

cerbie said:


> Also, don't get rid of what works, even if it may be old, just because there's newer. The makers follow what they think the market wants, which also means a slim minority of users with good reasons for not wanting the new thing may be left in the cold.



Remembering this is the Incandescent section of the forum, and having seen these type of comments many many times in the past, for new comers, here's the difference in perspectives from how I have long seen it. 

There are many scenarios where the various features of incand lighting is superior. Same goes for LED, HID, Fluorscents, LASERS, Lens/Mirrors, and even oil lamps, candles, matches, or burning torches on a stick. It is just ignorant for LED Jockeys to say any one technology is best, or other technologies are dead. During an intimate dinner, I'm lighting candles, with dimmed background incands to set the mood.

Besides fixed lighting in and around my home which is 95% incand, 4% CFL, and 1% 4 foot long fluorescent, I own 200-400 portable Incands, 100 -200 LED's, 15-20 HID's, 8 LASERS, 5-6 Oil lanterns, various Fresnel and/or mirror devices, etc. etc.

There is nothing that leaves a person who has a balanced appreciation of many technologies "out in the cold." We can, and do purchase quality LED and other lights as we see fit. However, most people who are hyper-fixated on LED's or buy lighting based upon lumens per watt efficiency as the most important factor--decided long ago that all incands are a sickly, anemic orange, whose bulb life is as pathetic as an ice cube on a July afternoon in El Paso Texas. That is their misguided misunderstanding often brought up to justify their technology to appear as "superior." 

Never mind that I have the same WA 1185 bulb in a 2005 FiveMega 3D mod that gets used nearly every week. Never mind that I have had a 20,000 hr 60W incan bulb giving a nice bright white color running in a room 24/7 since I installed it October 26, 2010 (28 months) which works out to 19,488 hours--not including the Hurricane Sandy power outage. The 10 times as expensive CFL in a matching lamp failed after 10 months.


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## idleprocess (Feb 23, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> However, most people who are hyper-fixated on LED's or buy lighting based upon lumens per watt efficiency as the most important factor--decided long ago that all incands are a sickly, anemic orange, whose bulb life is as pathetic as an ice cube on a July afternoon in El Paso Texas. That is their misguided misunderstanding often brought up to justify their technology to appear as "superior."


We all justify/rationalize our preferences various ways. LED and floro fans do tend to focus on efficiency, but that's hardly the only thing. I'm a fan of LED's and personally find the overall color temperature for ~4000K LED more pleasing than that of incan / floro in addition to the longer rated life and efficiency. I'll agree that the efficiency argument is overblown for most people where lighting is such a small percentage of the residence's overall energy / electricity consumption, and thus should not receive so much attention as major appliances and climate control.

I hear the incan fans raving about spectrum all the time and claim that none of the CFL/warm LED options are sufficient - and if that floats their boat, cool. But just like audiophiles and blind A/B tests between CD/vinyl or solid/state tube amps, a significant majority of them population can't consistently tell the difference with warm LED. I'm sure there are niche cases - such as some color-matching situations - where the comparison would clearly favor one or the other, but for most of the market it doesn't seem to matter.



> Never mind that I have had a 20,000 hr 60W incan bulb giving a nice bright white color running in a room 24/7 since I installed it October 26, 2010 (28 months) which works out to 19,488 hours--not including the Hurricane Sandy power outage. The 10 times as expensive CFL in a matching lamp failed after 10 months.


Operating costs dwarf purchase price for both technologies anyway, so focusing on purchase price misses the bigger picture when discussing cost.

Curious how you managed to spend ten times as much on a CFL as an incandescent - special-application bulb or something?


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## jtr1962 (Feb 23, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> There are many scenarios where the various features of incand lighting is superior. Same goes for LED, HID, Fluorscents, LASERS, Lens/Mirrors, and even oil lamps, candles, matches, or burning torches on a stick. It is just ignorant for LED Jockeys to say any one technology is best, or other technologies are dead. During an intimate dinner, I'm lighting candles, with dimmed background incands to set the mood.


It's important to remember this your set of views and preferences here. Obviously there are certain scenarios where one of the options you mention might be markedly superior, or perhaps even the only possibility. For example, nobody is using LEDs in an oven, and nothing but a laser is suitable for reading an optical disk. That said, when choosing between options which can all do the job, one will tend to focus on what's most important to them. They may even use different criteria in different situations. The end result could be one person uses 95% LEDs and another person uses 95% incandescents.



> There is nothing that leaves a person who has a balanced appreciation of many technologies "out in the cold." We can, and do purchase quality LED and other lights as we see fit. However, most people who are hyper-fixated on LED's or buy lighting based upon lumens per watt efficiency as the most important factor--decided long ago that all incands are a sickly, anemic orange, whose bulb life is as pathetic as an ice cube on a July afternoon in El Paso Texas. That is their misguided misunderstanding often brought up to justify their technology to appear as "superior."


I'll offer you an alternate view here. I think most of the people posting on CPF lived the majority of their lives during a time when incandescent was just about the only viable option for most portable lighting (those fluorescent campling lanterns notwithstanding). Many even have lived much of their lives during the time when there really weren't many residential lighting options besides incandescent except maybe T12 fluorescents. We had plenty of time to become thoroughly familiar with this technology. Perhaps some are embracing newer technology with what you might see as a fanaticism (i.e. "LED jockeys") because the characteristics of incandescent made us loathe it. Once something even slightly better came along, that's it, we were done with it. For some the reason was indeed the color of the light. For others it was the relatively short lifetime. For still others it may have been the lack of efficiency. For most it was a combination of all three. And yet you see this as misguided misunderstanding. Maybe we do understand things, and we understand that for close to 100% of our uses there's nothing superior about incandescents compared to the alternatives. Right now I don't anticipate more than three incandescents remaining in service in my place by year's end. One is in a seldom used hallway light which happens to have a dimmer. I'm not buying an expensive dimmable LED or CFL bulb for something which is seldom used. The other is in the attic where I go maybe once a year. The last one is in the oven. Outside of those three, we have two chandeliers which I'll be converting to LED by year's end. Emitter cost and efficiency finally reached the point where it made sense to do this. Truthfully, we didn't have all that many more incandescents than this even 20 years ago. Some table lamps were incandescent before CFLs came out, but most everything was linear fluorescent except the aforementioned chandeliers.

Remember there's nothing stopping you from enjoying your incandescents even if the world goes 100% LED. Hobbyists still play with tube amplifiers, steam engines, all sorts of other technologies which are technically "dead" as far as use by the masses goes.


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## Woods Walker (Feb 23, 2013)

[h=2]Incandescent Flashlights[/h](8 Viewing)


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## JCD (Feb 23, 2013)

Woods Walker said:


> *Incandescent Flashlights*
> 
> (8 Viewing)



So many self-proclaimed flashaholics, yet so few true connoisseurs! :-D


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## jtr1962 (Feb 24, 2013)

This is interesting.

This is a development in incandescent which even I can get excited about. By reflecting back the IR, they can increase the efficiency enormously while keeping the visible spectrum the same. 45 lm/W has been demonstrated in the lab. I think part of the allure of LED for a lot of us here is the fact that it's a quickly evolving technology. In ten years, LEDs went from being less efficient than an incandescent to well over ten times as efficient. We've even hit close to twenty times as efficient in the lab (276 lm/W to be precise). And at the same time binning, color rendering, and consistency have all improved enormously, while cost have dropped by at least a factor of ten. Meanwhile, until not long ago incandescent was pretty much stagnant. The 100 watt bulbs you could buy in 2010 weren't really any different than the ones you could buy when I was in grade school. But now it seems incandescent might be evolving, at least for general lighting use (I think LED pretty much has portable lighting sewn up as far as the masses are concerned). Although not discussed in the article (except for stating it can produce warm white light to cool white light), it appears they may also be able to reflect back a portion of the visual spectrum. Or put another way, instead of using a blue coating to make an incandescent appear "whiter" (and greatly reducing efficiency in the process), the undesired light in the visual spectrum will just be reflected back to keep the filament at running temperature, actually enhancing efficiency further. This solves two major issues with incandescents-low efficiency, and the lack of any light color other than warm white. Cost seems the major issue here with making a viable product. These can't cost that much more than today's incandescents or most people will just opt for LED with its even greater efficiency and much longer life (LED bulbs are projected to drop below $5 by 2020). I still see LED largely taking over, even if these are a commercial success, but I definitely see a pretty big niche market for a more efficient incandescent.


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## Wolfen (Feb 24, 2013)

I like my Streamlight Strion incan. and the Pila / Wolf eyes incan. I had back in the day. I hope the new technology is allowed to flourish and is not stamped out by ever increasing efficiency requirements by governments. IMHO ican. lighting issues are often seen as the realm of "fringe groups" so it doesn't often get much favorable play with the press.


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## LuxLuthor (Feb 24, 2013)

idleprocess said:


> I hear the incan fans raving about spectrum all the time and claim that none of the CFL/warm LED options are sufficient - and if that floats their boat, cool. But just like audiophiles and blind A/B tests between CD/vinyl or solid/state tube amps, a significant majority of them population can't consistently tell the difference with warm LED. I'm sure there are niche cases - such as some color-matching situations - where the comparison would clearly favor one or the other, but for most of the market it doesn't seem to matter.



Well, I have always said that I am interested and supportive of new technologies, including LED's. People have told me about the various Nichia warm emitters, and I have tried a High CRI model from HDS, and several Nailbender D26 dropins for these FM lights, and several from Saabluster. None of them are *remotely close* to performing like a quality incand--especially for rendering true-to-life colors, and multi-spectral contrast outside. They just have a warmer peak Kelvin temp due to things like LED coating. If you know of radically better improvements, let me know and I'll try them as well.



idleprocess said:


> Operating costs dwarf purchase price for both technologies anyway, so focusing on purchase price misses the bigger picture when discussing cost.



I disagree with your characterization of the savings as "dwarfing" the purchase price. For the average homeowner who doesn't leave lights on when they leave rooms, the share of an electric bill due to lighting is a very small percentage. Buying high CRI quality CFL & LED's that would work (as opposed to the CFL that failed much sooner than advertised and had no dimming) are still not at the cheap price that quality incands were. That's why the government liberals who decide what's best for everyone (which is almost never the case) passed legislation banning them.



idleprocess said:


> Curious how you managed to spend ten times as much on a CFL as an incandescent - special-application bulb or something?



Assuming this is a serious query, it is a simple 3rd grade economics division problem where the numerator is $10-15 CFL's (when I bought them at Home Despot), and the demoninator is a range of 50 cents to $1.10 for various quality brands of incands. I won't get into the prices of the light bulb socket LED replacements.

*JTR*, IRC incan bulbs have been around for quite a number of years, and you will see a number of them having been evaluated in my incand destructive bulb tests in the pinned topics. I could have sworn that you and I discussed them in similar LED vs. Incan debates years ago. They are wonderful technology developments in this area. My earlier comment about misguided misunderstanding relates specifically to those who apparently have always hated everything about incandescent bulbs, and describe them as some shade of sickly orange, and having ridiculously short life spans to exaggerate making your point. I have never used sickly orange unless I am intentionally putting an incand on a dimmer. I am sure that there are variations in retinal color perceptions and spectral preferences, but that is not a common feature used to describe modern incandescents.

*Woods Walker* mentioned the reduced numbers viewing the Incan section of the forums. Right now only 2 are viewing Budget Lights, and there are similar low counts viewing Lasers, Special Application Lighting, Custom Forge, Darkroom, etc. I guess all those areas are dead too. :ironic:


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## LGT (Feb 24, 2013)

LGT said:


> What's new and relevant changes. The day will come when cree emitters are obsolete, and what replaces those will become obsolete.Don't despair in what has become a thing of the past. Grab on to the future of what some nice emitters are becoming.


Hate to quote my own post. But I was no way implying that incans are dead. Just two weeks ago I bought replacement bulbs from LF for my E1e and E2e surefires so that I can run them on rcr 123 batteries. I already have plenty of spare bulbs for my C2 Centurian. I really enjoy using my incans. But I also enjoy LED's for what they do. But there is always that, IMO, one missing ingredient to bring high cri led's up to the incan tint.


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## jtr1962 (Feb 24, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> *JTR*, IRC incan bulbs have been around for quite a number of years, and you will see a number of them having been evaluated in my incand destructive bulb tests in the pinned topics. I could have sworn that you and I discussed them in similar LED vs. Incan debates years ago. They are wonderful technology developments in this area. My earlier comment about misguided misunderstanding relates specifically to those who apparently have always hated everything about incandescent bulbs, and describe them as some shade of sickly orange, and having ridiculously short life spans to exaggerate making your point. I have never used sickly orange unless I am intentionally putting an incand on a dimmer. I am sure that there are variations in retinal color perceptions and spectral preferences, but that is not a common feature used to describe modern incandescents.


I recall that discussion. This recent development is a further evolution on that. Remember at the time IRC was maybe doubling efficiency which isn't bad, but still well short of other technologies. It seems if I read that article correctly we'll be able to at least exceed CFL efficiency, perhaps even get close to 100 lm/W, all while retaining the characteristics of incandescent light which those like yourself admire. Moreover, apparently we'll also be able to have incandescents which are higher CCT without blue filters which waste light. Again, this is a very significant development because it means both low and high CCT light, plus everything in between, all with close to 100 CRI, and all with excellent efficiency.

As far as "sickly orange" descriptions go, remember that we all perceive things differently. Your nice shade of white could be my sickly orange, while my nice shade of white could be your x-ray blue. Personally, I find overdriven incans like one might find in a flashlight or a projector lamp acceptable, but remember that whiter light comes at the cost of lifetime measured in some tens of hours. Therefore, such lamps wouldn't be viable for general lighting. The more common ~3000K halogen looks decided yellow to me. And once you get to the 2700K of a 40 watt bulb, you're into orange. The candelabra bulbs running at 2500K or 2600K are well into "sickly orange" territory.

Anyway, this new technology seems to solve two of the three issues I have with incandescents. The third, lifetime, really doesn't matter much if they can be made inexpensively enough. Certainly anything similar or better than the ~1000 hours people have been used to will be acceptable.



> If you know of radically better improvements, let me know and I'll try them as well.



The Xicato Artist series of LEDs has a CRI of 97 or 98, and is available in CCTs of 3000K, 3500K, and 4000K. I've never seen one in action so I can't vouch for how close it is to incandescent, but the spectrum of the 3000K version looks very close. The only issue is these are LED arrays made for general lighting. I'm not sure if they would be viable for flashlights. You could definitely make a nice camping lantern with one though.


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## idleprocess (Feb 24, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> Well, I have always said that I am interested and supportive of new technologies, including LED's. People have told me about the various Nichia warm emitters, and I have tried a High CRI model from HDS, and several Nailbender D26 dropins for these FM lights, and several from Saabluster. None of them are *remotely close* to performing like a quality incand--especially for rendering true-to-life colors, and multi-spectral contrast outside. They just have a warmer peak Kelvin temp due to things like LED coating. If you know of radically better improvements, let me know and I'll try them as well.


I'm not going to argue subjective impressions, being that they're personal and it wastes time all around. If something does or doesn't do it for you, vote with your wallet.

There are narrow slices of the population that can tell the difference in blind tests _for general lighting_, and the rest of the population. The latter, being the overwhelming majority, determine where the markets go.



> I disagree with your characterization of the savings as "dwarfing" the purchase price. For the average homeowner who doesn't leave lights on when they leave rooms, the share of an electric bill due to lighting is a very small percentage. Buying high CRI quality CFL & LED's that would work (as opposed to the CFL that failed much sooner than advertised and had no dimming) are still not at the cheap price that quality incands were.


The costs of _operating_ it dwarfs its purchase price.

I pay $0.13 / kWH, so I'll use that for comparison.

A 60W Incan uses 60 kWH per 1000 hours of operation, which would cost me $7.80. Operating your 20k hour incandescent would cost me $156.

A 13W CFL (nominally labelled as 60W incan equivalent) uses 13 kWH per 1000 hours of operation, which would cost me $1.69; if it makes it the ~8000hrs I often see CFL's rated for, operating cost is $13.52. If a CFL would last the same 20k hours as your incandescent, its operating cost would amount to $33.80.

The purchase price for either is pretty trivial when you look at the lifetime cost of its electricity consumption. There are some complications such as utilities that charge for power factor correction, but the worst power factor I've seen is around 0.80, which would not distort the CFL's "billed" power consumption by enough to change the balance much.



> Assuming this is a serious query, it is a simple 3rd grade economics division problem where the numerator is $10-15 CFL's (when I bought them at Home Despot), and the demoninator is a range of 50 cents to $1.10 for various quality brands of incands. I won't get into the prices of the light bulb socket LED replacements.


I can buy name brand A19 incans for $0.50 - $1 each; halogens are around the $2 mark. The overwhelming bulk of name-brand A19 CFL's go for $2 each with some specialty models reaching $4; last time I saw them costing around $10 was about 10 years ago when they were relatively new to the mass market (and far better quality). I can find some niche special-application bulbs for $10 each, but those are non-A19. So the spread is 8 at most, typically 4, 2 at least; half those numbers for halogens.

Run the numbers on a LED replacement and you'll see that its total cost of ownership is lower than incan _assuming it makes its purported operating lifespan_, but not as good as CFL. My personal shallow sample depth suggests that they will tend to last something close to their rated lives.

Cost isn't everything, but purchase price never tells the entire story on total cost of ownership.


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## JCD (Feb 24, 2013)

LGT said:


> But there is always that, IMO, one missing ingredient to bring high cri led's up to the incan tint.



Tint and CRI are two separate things.


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## LGT (Feb 24, 2013)

JCD said:


> Tint and CRI are two separate things.


I tried looking up the difference between the two terms but came up with negative results. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but could you explain the difference between tint and CRI? I always enjoy learning something new.:thanks:


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## idleprocess (Feb 24, 2013)

LGT said:


> I tried looking up the difference between the two terms but came up with negative results. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but could you explain the difference between tint and CRI? I always enjoy learning something new.:thanks:



For a _white light source_, *tint* describes its white balance point. When you see Correlated Color Temperatures (CCT) being tossed around such as 2700K or 4000K, that is describing a 1-D measurement of where along a curve through color space known as the black body curve the white point is closest to. Perversely, the lower the CCT the _warmer_ it is described as due to the red dominance of its spectrum (2700K is fairly warm); conversely, the higher the CCT, the _cooler_ it is described as due to the blue dominance of its spectrum (5000K is usually perceived as cool). 

A more accurate description of tint are the CIE color coordinates, which are often used to describe tint bins for white LED's - this narrows down the white point to a more precise 2D region and better expresses its white balance point. By their nature, incandescents always lie on the blackbody curve, thus a CCT is generally sufficient to describe their white balance point.


CRI is Color Rendering Index, a measurement of how accurately a white light source renders colors. By the very definition of the measurement, incandecents have a perfect score of 100. White LED, which has color spectrum different than that of incandescent, does not hit 100 (especially with the more efficient cool white LED's common on the marketplace), but as others have mentioned there are products on the market hitting 90, and some tricks to hit the high 90s. There are other measurements of color quality besides CRI, but it is the most common.


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## LEDAdd1ct (Feb 24, 2013)

Whenever I see Lux, jtr, and idle all together in the same thread I know I am always in for a spirited discussion! I absolutely love reading your (plural) posts (have for years now, before and after becoming a board member) and appreciate how people can have such radically varying opinions.





jtr1962;4147012[COLOR=#333333 said:


> (LED bulbs are projected to drop below $5 by 2020).



Can you post a link to the source of this information? LED Add1cts want to know...


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## jtr1962 (Feb 24, 2013)

LEDAdd1ct said:


> Can you post a link to the source of this information? LED Add1cts want to know...


Go to the third from the last page


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## idleprocess (Feb 24, 2013)

LEDAdd1ct said:


> Whenever I see Lux, jtr, and idle all together in the same thread I know I am always in for a spirited discussion! I absolutely love reading your (plural) posts (have for years now, before and after becoming a board member) and appreciate how people can have such radically varying opinions.


I'm glad _somebody_ is reading...

jtr and I cross paths with some regularity ... a bit less frequent that LuxLuthor and I are conversing in a thread, but _spirited_ is indeed an apt description when it happens.


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## LuxLuthor (Feb 24, 2013)

LGT said:


> I tried looking up the difference between the two terms but came up with negative results. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but could you explain the difference between tint and CRI? I always enjoy learning something new.:thanks:



CRI is an important concept, and one that is not well understood by many flashaholics. There is a pretty good explanation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index Note the 2nd paragraph where even more accurate lighting models are presented to address even the limitations of CRI. Also note the final paragraph titled Film and video high-CRI LED lighting incompatibility. This also relates to comments that most lighting preferences are subjective or a matter of personal preference, or that only narrow slices of the population can discern an ideal source of home lighting. I'd like to see how any such "blind" lighting studies were conducted, and what agendas were behind whoever paid for the studies.

*idleprocess*, interesting to see that my latest electric cost is 8.2 cents per KWH here in CT. While I do not question your math calculations, you are not representing the actual average use of home lighting in your assumptions of total expense of bulb & usage. It is why the percent of residential electric bills due to lighting is estimated at 5-15% Your assumptions that markets drive demand does not include the regular barage of liberal energy conservation (& clean energy dogma) propaganda and actual banning of incandescent bulbs first in Europe, then in the USA. 

When the bans were announced, stores could not keep incan bulbs on the shelves. Many like myself have already purchased a lifetime of various incan household bulbs. Newer home lighting purchasers cannot vote with their wallet since a ban is in effect, and most people don't know enough to question the assumptions leading to the ban. I was not discussing currently priced CFL, but rather ones that were represented to be "full spectrum" 6-8 years ago. It was about the time all of the toxic mercury hazard cleanup spill announcements came out if one of your CFL bulbs broke. I have had no interest in buying any CFL bulbs since then.

*JTR*, I'm not seeing the Xicato Artist series being sold after 10 mins of searches, but looks interesting.


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## LEDAdd1ct (Feb 25, 2013)

jtr1962 said:


> Go to the third from the last page



Thank you!


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## idleprocess (Feb 25, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> *idleprocess*, interesting to see that my latest electric cost is 8.2 cents per KWH here in CT. While I do not question your math calculations, you are not representing the actual average use of home lighting in your assumptions of total expense of bulb & usage. It is why the percent of residential electric bills due to lighting is estimated at 5-15%.


You are demolishing an argument of your construction, not mine. I am not speaking to any sort of monthly savings that one may or may not see from more efficient lighting. I have oft mentioned that lighting is far down the ladder on the electrical budget of the average residence.

_Energy_ ROI on residential lighting improvements is indeed long and will likely be lost in the noise of variations in major appliance usage. I only noticed it comparing bills once due to complete replacement of all light bulbs in the middle of a 2-month span with fairly consistent usage / weather ... and I'm still not sure if there was something else I didn't account for.



LuxLuthor said:


> Your assumptions that markets drive demand does not include [...] actual banning of incandescent bulbs first in Europe, then in the USA.


There is indeed significant legislation on the subject of the A19 incandescent bulb, which seems to have done little to affect availability due to delays and significant loopholes. The legislation also seems to trail consumer uptake of alternatives. Arguments about the motives for and appropriateness of such laws is a conversation for another venue.


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## ampdude (Feb 25, 2013)

I found a bunch of old Maglites in a local hardware store recently. Probably gonna pick them up in the next couple days... Some of the packages dated back a long way.


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## sedstar (Mar 27, 2013)

someone up there asked:

"is there anything incans can do that LEDs cant do better?" (paraphrsing...)

YES!

any incan on the market quickly and cheaple becomes a IR illuminator, simply by adding a IR filter...

That said, sure, spec-wise a LED IR emitter is "better"... it makes a narrow nM range of frquency light so you dont ned a filter, your mor efficient because you arent filtering (losing, wasting) light... but this is more EXPENSIVE.

no special batteries the consumer is not familiar with, the "old paint" workhorse incan flshlight their hands are USED TO now serves double duty, simply switch bezels or pop filter cap on and GO night vision.

you can clap a IR fiter onj/over spotlight or floodlight and throw LOT of IR light really FAR... but, LED IR emitters re limited right now that i can see to 5W... i dont even wanna THINK what a 50 or 100 watt IR EMITTER in LED would COST at retail, LMAO...

granted, this is a niche market, so... its not going to help "save" incans retail life if it comes to that, but... someone asked "wht CAN an inca do that an LED cant do?"


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## cland72 (Mar 27, 2013)

sedstar said:


> someone up there asked:
> 
> "is there anything incans can do that LEDs cant do better?" (paraphrsing...)
> 
> ...



I respectfully disagree. even with an IR filter, the output is awfully inefficient when compared to a properly configured IR LED.

As for cost, I disagree there as well. Take Surefire 6P for example: an IR filter will cost around $40+, whereas buying an IR drop in will be $35 on the high end for a NB unit. You can get them for as little as $15 on ebay.

Not that I don't like incan, I do, especially for cooking steaks on the grill -- but, I can also get pretty darn good color rendition from a Nichia 219. I think that given another 3-5 years, we'll see LEDs with 100 CRI rating, effectively making incans useless.


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## LGT (Mar 27, 2013)

In 3 to 5 years the LED's now used might be considered "useless" because of the inevitable advancement of emitters. Would you toss them all away because there is someting more efficient? IMO the only useless flashlight is one that doesn't work. Regardless of what comes out in the future, my SF E2E incan, even after buying many, many LED lights from high cri to cool white, continues to be my favorite light.


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## scout24 (Mar 27, 2013)

E2e+LF HO-E1R + 17670=

also anything G3, (LF HO-9)

and M6... 

GOOD incan has a LOT of life left... imho.


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## Arm and Leg (Mar 27, 2013)

scout24 said:


> E2e+LF HO-E1R + 17670=
> 
> also anything G3, (LF HO-9)
> 
> ...


With LEDs now getting much better and staying fairly cheap, I don't think it's viable for companies to produce it anymore.
Plus, incandescents are fairly fragile.


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## idleprocess (Mar 27, 2013)

LGT said:


> In 3 to 5 years the LED's now used might be considered "useless" because of the inevitable advancement of emitters.


Dollar-store and big-box $7.99 garbage will always get tossed out earlier than their owners anticipated ... but long enough after the purchase that they show up to buy another one of whatever strikes their fancy while being less than their low pain level.



LGT said:


> Would you toss them all away because there is someting more efficient? IMO the only useless flashlight is one that doesn't work.


I have a 3x Luxeon III mag-mod that I did many years ago that I still use with some regularity. The amount of lux I need to see in the dark hasn't increased by all that much in that time, nor have the components degraded by much, nor are NiMH cells hard to come by. While it is neither as bright nor as efficient as something using comparable tech today, it still works.

The issue is not so much obsolescence of technology _(comparisons to computers always forget the steady change in software that demands steady increases in computing capabilities)_ as it is changing market preferences. 

A more apt computer analogy is how the shift away from desktop computers to laptops and smartphone-based devices like tablets is making the traditional modular desktop a bit more expensive, a bit less widespread, and considerably less available as the bulk of the market loses interest. The enthusiasts will keep using them and the manufacturers will keep supplying it at whatever economy of scale they can sustain - which will likely be stepping down over time as volumes decline.

With flashlights, the volumes are moving to LED. I imagine that cheaper standards like the PR base flashlight bulb will eventually be reduced to niche items first since there is little consumer "investment" in that standard. The marginal producers will go while the more efficient producers will squeeze their sunk costs for the last years of profit. Iconic names like Mag-Lite and Surefire will sustain production of more proprietary bulbs since their customers have a bit more invested in their offerings in the case of Mag-Lite _(spare bulb in the tailcap of mini-maglites may well be one of the reasons they undure - when the bulb in the socket blows you have a hot spare ready and just replace the bulb rather than cursing the manufacturer)_ and a good deal invested in the case of Surefire. In the case of Surefire, I imagine that they make very good money selling bulbs - which is likely why there are 3rd parties that have begun offering replacements at a slightly lower price.



Arm and Leg said:


> With LEDs now getting much better and staying fairly cheap, I don't think it's viable for companies to produce it anymore.
> Plus, incandescents are fairly fragile.


Eh, depends on how hot they run and how they're designed. I would bet on a Surefire P6x / P9x lamp assembly in a Surefire body for shock over some LED flashlight drivers.


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## kaichu dento (Mar 28, 2013)

ampdude said:


> Shouldn't be a big deal, but I'm just kind of bummed out about that. Also saw that Target was nearly out of incan Maglites, and none of those are likely to be replaced. Especially the Solitaires and Minimags.


I'm a little sad to think of the lights with bulbs, which we grew up with are disappearing - all except for the Solitaire! 

Have no plans to get rid of my E1e or E2E - ever!



Imon said:


> CFL and LED bulbs just either don't dim low enough or look ugly at low output.


I've got a three-level LED bulb in my room that looks quite nice on low, and I expect we'll be seeing more soon.



jtr1962 said:


> I think part of the allure of LED for a lot of us here is the fact that it's a quickly evolving technology.


You may be right about some, in fact I'm sure of it, but I'd say that there are even more, who, like myself, prefer LED's because we were tired of going to use the light and realizing we had to see if we still had a spare bulb in the tailcap, or if we'd used the light for too long and had no battery power left, nor enough batteries in our pocket to reload.

Additionally, after having tried for the longest time to get the same dimmability my home lighting offered into my flashlights, I found it, in some of the newer wave of readily available, long running LED lights, which surpass my favorite incans in all ways, including enjoyability of tint and color recognition.

To sum up, the things I look for in a light when it comes to emitter choice is primarily tint, for both color recognition and depth of field, enjoyability of the lighting itself, durability of the emitter and efficiency when it comes to running out of pocket-power. 

Sad to see the classic incans leaving the shelves, but not nearly as sad as many other changes of late.


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## Patriot (Mar 28, 2013)

I didn't read all 71 posts but it looks like Lumens Factory is still producing the E series lamps, which were among my favorites. Their A2 lamps were equally impressive and since I still use them quite a bit, I've got a good supply of them.


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## Cavannus (Apr 4, 2013)

Hi,


Apart from the highest possible cRI, incans show a great pro: most of them are simple, basically built and so easy to repair compared to leds. For instance cavers liked the Petzl Zoom headlamp because you could open it easily to repair it in case of failure, or rebuild one with two damaged Zooms. 
Most parts especially the bulb are standard, so you can easily put a brighter or dimmer bulb, or use another voltage with a dummy battery (this dummy battery may be tinfoil + paper in case of emergency), etc.

I remember that when cavers and hikers discovered the first led lamps in 1999-2000, they often mentioned that the lower the battery voltage, the better the efficiency -- hence a significant safety improvement compared to incandescent that was more and more inefficient when dimmer and dimmer. Don't forget that back in these days leds weren't much more efficient than incandescents at rated current (15-20 lm/w).

Another reason why we enjoyed leds was the smoother beam either with 5mm leds or with Luxeon-I replacement bulbs. The "cool white" colour was also new hence a "wow" effect underground (5mm Nichia leds had a quite high 80 CRI), I remember that I experienced my first led lamps as a nice mini-HID/mercury lamp -- while most of cavers really hated this "artificial" tint compared to their "natural" incandescent or acetylene headlamps!

However the warm and high-CRI light of some professional headlamps allow them to remain a relevant choice. For instance, 1-2 years ago a friend of mine worked as a miner in a gold mine. He was part of a junior team and they all were given new led caplamps; the foreman managed to keep an old halogen caplamp (those halogen bulbs are underdriven so that the bulb lasts longer, so the CCT is quite low) and they all preferred his nice warm light, even if it was dimmer than their leds. 
Moral of the story: if a foreman chooses old incan and give the new bright led caplamps to juniors, that means that incans remain a better choice!


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## LuxLuthor (Apr 5, 2013)

Great story, Cavannus.


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## SureAddicted (Apr 5, 2013)

I doubt incans are going anywhere anytime soon. The same arguement was had 3-4 ago, and nothing has changed.
Everyone thought when the cassette player came out that records would be dead, and when cd's came out cassette players would be dead. To an extent, some of it is true, but a lot still use records, for the quality of sound it provides. I can go out today and still buy records, but not cassettes. Incans are like records, they will never go away, because there are people who are after a higher quality of light.


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## jcvjcvjcvjcv (Apr 6, 2013)

I think that's more because those old people never heard of SA-CD or Audio-DVD and out of nostalgia. The only thing I hear with records compared to CD's is a lot more noise and long tones having a 'hovering' frequency.

As for the EU's ban on nice bulbs... I hope the EU dies a peaceful death before 'C' labeled Halogen bulbs get banned in 2016.

Oh, on energy costs: for private consumers household use... if you add the fixed monthly costs etc. etc. most people in the Netherlands get to around €0.25 per KWh. With today's exchange rate that's around $0.29
That's around 7 cents real cost per Kwh, 11 cents energytax, ~4 cents value added tax over the previous (yes, we pay value added tax over an energy tax) and some for fixed costs (like the 70 bucks yearly for a standard 1x40A - 3x25A line). For stuff that runs 24/7 we calculate with €2 per connected Watt per year.


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## mesa232323 (Apr 6, 2013)

Incandescents these days are inefficient compared to LEDs, bulky, sensitive to shock, in most situations look poorly when the batteries are getting low, get really hot and are susceptible to instaflash. That's why I buy all the latest LED emmiters. As strange as it may sound, I still use the incandescent the most. Even when the situation calls for a long lasting bright LED that I can stick into my pocket, I find every excuse to use the hotwire. I don't know what my deal is! Is it because most of my lights are Mag based? Is it the retroness of a warm glow? Maybe the new emitters just seem to bright. Everything seems pleasant and more fulfilling to my eyes, even before I knew about CRI. I'm like a bug attracted to a porch light. Someone please help break me away from this incand madness!


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## kaichu dento (Apr 7, 2013)

Mesa, while I seldom actually use my incan lights, I can't bring myself to part with them and my favorite LED light is the one that looks like it's an incan! Love my Nichia 219 Haiku for work related usage, but prefer the warmer incan tinted 219 in my V10R Ti the most.


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## mesa232323 (Apr 7, 2013)

I recently purchased an L10 with the high CRI nichia and on the lowest setting I feel like the tint is a waste of light. I'm not used to it and frankly I'd rather be creeping around the house with a cool tint if I'm using an LED. 

LEDs have certainly come a long ways. I'd love to blaze through my house in the middle of the night with a 1185 but my wife would dismember me when I climbed into bed. FireFly mode is something I can't do with an incandescent unless I hold my hand over the front end and sizzle my fingers.


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## LuxLuthor (Apr 7, 2013)

mesa232323 said:


> Incandescents these days are inefficient compared to LEDs, bulky, sensitive to shock, in most situations look poorly when the batteries are getting low, get really hot and are susceptible to instaflash. That's why I buy all the latest LED emmiters. As strange as it may sound, I still use the incandescent the most. Even when the situation calls for a long lasting bright LED that I can stick into my pocket, I find every excuse to use the hotwire. I don't know what my deal is! Is it because most of my lights are Mag based? Is it the retroness of a warm glow? Maybe the new emitters just seem to bright. Everything seems pleasant and more fulfilling to my eyes, even before I knew about CRI. I'm like a bug attracted to a porch light. Someone please help break me away from this incand madness!



Your practical observations and "subconcious" preferences are not an accident. Incans do look better for all of the reasons that Incan Jockeys have always known. Yes there are pro's and con's to each lighting source, and we put up with lower efficiency in return for better color depth and accuracy.

Again, this is the only section in the forum where instead of staying in the LED Flashlights category, LED Jockeys repeatedly come out from under their LED rocks to try and trash incands. They seem to be like LED Moths wistfully drawn to the Incan Hotwire flame, but then are left spiralling to the dirt after their aeronautical incineration.

People pretend that Nichia and other LED emitters are equal substitutes, but other than a few like JTR who likely have a different genetic distribution of rods and cones, all the answers are in those links I gave in my earlier post #61. Despite their desparate struggle to achieve the Holy Grail of 100% CRI, LED Jockeys seem incapable of clicking on links and reading/understanding why even the CRI number alone does not even come close to explaining the visual shortcomings of LED's.

But no matter, we few, we happy few, we band of Incan Jockey brothers will keep the light on for ya as the battle continues. 

Coming up on the 4th Anniversary of Saint Incand's Day.

*"...Be in their flowing lights freshly remember'd.*
* This story shall the good man teach his son;*
* And warm incan lumens shall ne'er go by,*
* From this day to the ending of the world,*
* But we in it shall be remember'd;*
* We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;*
* For he to-day that shines his light with me*
* Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,*
* This day shall gentle his condition:*
* And jockeys of LED's now a-bed*
* Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,*
* And hold their torch's cheap whiles any speaks*
* That fought with us upon Saint Incand's day"*
​


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## mesa232323 (Apr 7, 2013)

@lux I totally agree with you on the color accuracy and fullness. To my eyes, Incandescent flashlights seem to throw a lot further. There must be some kind of science behind it. Maybe the high color temperature of LED lights seems to reflect off of surrounding surfaces including dust, blinding me. I see the same effect when shining an LED down the freeway and every reflective sign within 2 miles bounces light back. 

I sure wish I would have been more serious in this hobby about 7 years ago when Fivemega was creating and selling all these masterpiece hotwire hosts that all say "CLOSED" "DO NOT PAY" those things look like Hotrods in a car show. If the battery cover were opened, I would expect to see a blown 454 fall out. I won't get 36mpg with a blown big block sticking out of my hood, but efficiency isn't always the winner.


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## idleprocess (Apr 7, 2013)

mesa232323 said:


> @lux I totally agree with you on the color accuracy and fullness. To my eyes, Incandescent flashlights seem to throw a lot further. There must be some kind of science behind it. Maybe the high color temperature of LED lights seems to reflect off of surrounding surfaces including dust, blinding me. I see the same effect when shining an LED down the freeway and every reflective sign within 2 miles bounces light back.


In my experience, low color quality LED sources (pretty much anything reminiscent of Nichia "angry blue" from 5+ years ago) tend to "flatten" the scene to the point that depth perception is iffy and recognizing anything distant was difficult. I'm not sure if there was a perceptual-science angle to it, or just the fact that my brain couldn't get around the newness of that type of light source. I still have a flashlight like that which has the added bonus of putting some 95% of the light into a very uniform ~5 degree beam, likely aggravating the effect with the lack of spill and sharp beam cutoff ... it's not used often at all.

I've noticed that the reflection effect is highly pronounced with HID as well as LED. It may have something to do with the light color and reflectivity of dust and water vapor in the air. It's downright distracting whenever dust or humidity levels are high.


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## kaichu dento (Apr 8, 2013)

mesa232323 said:


> I recently purchased an L10 with the high CRI nichia and on the lowest setting I feel like the tint is a waste of light. I'm not used to it and frankly I'd rather be creeping around the house with a cool tint if I'm using an LED.
> 
> LEDs have certainly come a long ways.


A couple years back I was planning on getting warm tints swapped into all my lights, but noticed that on very low levels and with a floody enough pattern that the cooler tints were actually preferable for me and it's on the higher levels where I really like the incan tints, and hence, incans themselves, the best. 

Relating back to the discontinuation of incandescent bulbs as our primary artificial light sources, it's so nice to see so many of my friends holding out with their stashes of bulbs.


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## SemiMan (Apr 8, 2013)

kaichu dento said:


> A couple years back I was planning on getting warm tints swapped into all my lights, but noticed that on very low levels and with a floody enough pattern that the cooler tints were actually preferable for me and it's on the higher levels where I really like the incan tints, and hence, incans themselves, the best.
> 
> Relating back to the discontinuation of incandescent bulbs as our primary artificial light sources, it's so nice to see so many of my friends holding out with their stashes of bulbs.




With cooler tints, especially "cool white", at high brightness levels, you are likely starting to experience glare. That may be why you like the warmer tint.


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## SemiMan (Apr 8, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> Your practical observations and "subconcious" preferences are not an accident. Incans do look better for all of the reasons that Incan Jockeys have always known. Yes there are pro's and con's to each lighting source, and we put up with lower efficiency in return for better color depth and accuracy.
> 
> Again, this is the only section in the forum where instead of staying in the LED Flashlights category, LED Jockeys repeatedly come out from under their LED rocks to try and trash incands. They seem to be like LED Moths wistfully drawn to the Incan Hotwire flame, but then are left spiralling to the dirt after their aeronautical incineration.
> 
> ...



There are no "answers" in your links to Wikipedia. Lighting people know that CRI is a unitless measurement as it is not a measure of absolute color quality, simply a measure of conformance to a blackbody radiator curve.

Now don't expect me to defend the "quality" of the average cool white LED for critical viewing, as that would be silly.

On the other hand, for a general purpose illumination tool, 90+ CRI neutral white provides both color fidelity and color gamut across a wide range of scenes that incan cannot duplicate, no more than a 6000K LED can duplicate the deep reds that an INCAN will bring out, or the dingy dirty color an incan will render a blue-green carpet compared to the vibrant color that will be rendered with an 80 CRI 5000K white LED.

For lower lighting levels (common with INCAN), we do have an affinity for warmer color temperatures.

For many outdoor scenes, i.e. rich in browns, an INCAN can provide much better color contrast versus a cool white LED.

There may be technical merit to higher perceived throw with INCAN with fully adapted night vision due to improved focus from lack of blue, as well as higher resolution in red. A fully charged incan does have fairly high surface brightness so it can throw fairly far if designed as such. A hotwire can achieve very high surface brightness for long throw.

That said, a high quality warm white LED will be similarly deficient of blue and would not have blue focus issue.

In a cave, a cool white LED makes everything flat ..... but then again an incan is not the holy grail either. 4000K high CRI is fabulous in this environment if there are a diversity of colored mineral formations.



In the end, who cares .... use what you like  I can't say I use my incans much any more, but still have a bunch around. One spotlight does still get some use as I find the HID a bit too much in most situations. My high CRI 4000K tends to get the most usage followed closely by a relatively low cost single AA coolish light with a near perfect beam. It is just such a convenient light.


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## LuxLuthor (Apr 8, 2013)

Yes, essentially we are pretty much on the same page, except that you only ascribed the "dingy dirty color" characterization to the incan. There are plenty of examples to have used that desparaging descriptor with many tints of LED's. The bottom line is people should use what they like--recognizing that various scenarios have optimal light sources. There are many settings where I prefer an LED, and others an incand/HID/candle/bonfire etc.


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## SemiMan (Apr 8, 2013)

LuxLuthor said:


> Yes, essentially we are pretty much on the same page, except that you only ascribed the "dingy dirty color" characterization to the incan. There are plenty of examples to have used that desparaging descriptor with many tints of LED's. The bottom line is people should use what they like--recognizing that various scenarios have optimal light sources. There are many settings where I prefer an LED, and others an incand/HID/candle/bonfire etc.



A warm white LED in the same situation would have looked dingy as well, but the point was as you stated ... optimal light for the scenario.

I often prefer the soft glow of a candle, though can't say I have started a bonfire for lighting before 

Semiman


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## kaichu dento (Apr 8, 2013)

SemiMan said:


> With cooler tints, especially "cool white", at high brightness levels, you are likely starting to experience glare. That may be why you like the warmer tint.


Glare comes with the higher output levels, but being an incandescent fan I don't like the lifeless, flat and cold light coming from cooler emitters at high output levels, but on the other hand one of my favorite light sources is the moon and on low, floody ouput stages I like anything that resembles moonlight. Higher levels, and I want some depth and warmth. 

Now I'm packing my E1e and E2E to go play with a bit tonight out in the woods. These make a great pairing with the diffusion film I have on the E1e and the unaltered throw of the E2E.


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## scout24 (Apr 8, 2013)

Slipped my E2e in my back pocket this morning next to my wallet. LF HO E1R w/ 17670 is plenty for what I need a light for during the day. Runtime is fantastic, too...


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## mesa232323 (Apr 8, 2013)

kaichu dento said:


> Glare comes with the higher output levels, but being an incandescent fan I don't like the lifeless, flat and cold light coming from cooler emitters at high output levels, but on the other hand one of my favorite light sources is the moon and on low, floody ouput stages I like anything that resembles moonlight. Higher levels, and I want some depth and warmth.


You bring up a great point about low output cool LEDs resembling moonlight. It's natural and what us humans have evolved to see at night . Now I understand why I don't like a high CRI light on low levels walking around the house.


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## SemiMan (Apr 8, 2013)

mesa232323 said:


> You bring up a great point about low output cool LEDs resembling moonlight. It's natural and what us humans have evolved to see at night . Now I understand why I don't like a high CRI light on low levels walking around the house.



It is not the CRI that is the issue, it is the CCT as I am going to assume your light is warm in color? Night adapted vision (non color) is more efficient at shorter wavelengths ... those you don't typically have in an incan.

Semiman


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## caleb (Apr 9, 2013)

Incans are pretty anachronistic at this point, but still a lot a fun in their own way. I actually spent an evening earlier this week trying to hunt down a surefire e1e online, as they seem to be getting hard to find, and I felt like playing with one again (sold the one I had a while ago  )


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## JCD (Apr 9, 2013)

caleb said:


> Incans are pretty anachronistic at this point …



Not at all. There's still stuff that incans are better at than LEDs.


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