I was looking for a thrower to pair with Sofirn HS21 headlamp in order to use it for walking, cycling and mushroom foraging in the woods.
While HS21's spot is enough for narrow paths through trees, it's really cool white, more than 6500K in reality and it suffers heavily from refraction in the evening mist.
Recently I was convinced to go for Convoy M21E over Sofirn IF22A for various reasons, the biggest of them being choice of Emitter and CCT. I might even settle on SFT40, but there comes the warmth.
3000K is great for piercing fog as it refracts much less, thus not blinding me or creating a cloud of light in front of objects I want to illuminate, especially 300-400m away across fields or crevases.
Now… While using HS21, I noticed, even tho it's spot at 6500 K makes my yellow bags a bit greenish, I differentiate colors much more easily using it alone, than using it's floodlight (lumens matched) at 5000K (95 CRI). Beech wood bark that is grayish during the day seems brown; grass, leaf litter, and foliage blend in a bit, and while red is more red, not purplish as with spot, blue colors suffer. While there isn't much blue with mushrooms, except bruising of some Boletes, even spring leaves on branches get a bit yelowish tiny.
Not gonna lie, 5000K is indeed much easier on the eyes, but less bright and a bit Mexicanized.
Given my observation and preferences, should I absolutely NOT buy M21E with Luminus SFT40 3000 even tho it has much higher CRI than cooler versions? I'm doubting even 5000K version since it won't have the same fog piercing effect as 3000K, and if I go for 6500K, I might aswell stick with Sofirn's much cheaper IF22A whose beam I like from the comparison videos I saw.
So help me decide between flashlights and emitters please.
And comment down below if, from your experience, higher CRI means anything on warmer white emittrrs since with warmth comes a bit monochrom-y yellowish tint and reduced light strength. From my layman google research, I'd be better off with neutral or cooler white in kind of humid forests despite the mist.
Thanks in advance!!
Beamshots are for attention…
by Ok_Profession_8471
2 Comments
Okay just found a sptingtime mushroom, Sarcoscypha coccinea,
and it’s deep red color shows as it is only under 5000K high CRI
https://preview.redd.it/cbo51bgu6hog1.jpeg?width=4096&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a36d0a523680f03d9d9dfc763557f6f98e9cedc
floodlight of HS21 —
Is 5000K less bright? It more often than not is just as bright as 6500K but nicer. More – quite often 4000K is just as bright or within 5-7% which is indistinguishable. 3000K Luminus emitters are noticeably less bright, high CRI comes at the price of low efficiency. I don;t know what do you mean by “Mexicanized” but I guess it’s a local thing.
For the M21E I’d consider XHP50.3 R70 4000K instead of SFT-70 (you can ask Convoy for a custom order, Simon does that as long as parts fit) – it’s quite warm (3750-4000K), at or below duv so it has nice tint, really nice colors despite technically low CRI, it’s bright/efficient and still pretty throwy.