Thread: Spotlight 'light' too white

I have found that the flash super powerful bright spotlights we have used lately are a very 'white' light and dont show animals through a scope very well. The image is washed out with little colour and can be hard to pick from the background.
Anyway got thinking on this and realised that it will be because the spotlight is producing only a small part of the light spectrum.
Can anyone recommend a light that will show an animal clearly and eyes ?

I don't think LED's 'hold' animals as well as what bulbs do, but then everyone around here seems to be using thermals.

Used a brand new Ford Ranger last week and the headlight tint has to be the best I have ever seen

Could see deer out to 400m and easily put the crosshairs where needed

Find out what that tint spectrum is, if that’s the right word for it

light frequency is measured in kelvins (K) the higher the K the more into the blue you go. a normal lightbulb was 3000K, the "super white" you see in most LED's now is around 6000K.
but thats all they produce while halogens etc are white they also range into the infra red to the UV. i have found especially on rabbits its the infra that gets you the startled "look into the crosshairs"

I'm sure one of the light gurus will be along shortly, but I think if the small silicon blob covering the led is removed ( de doming) it changes the light into a bit more of the "yellow" spectrum. I guess you could try different lights with different colour temperatures to see which one you prefer. The slightly more yellow ones show colour a bit more I think. " cool white" Vs "warm white" etc...

Originally Posted by rugerman

I'm sure one of the light gurus will be along shortly, but I think if the small silicon blob covering the led is removed ( de doming) it changes the light into a bit more of the "yellow" spectrum. I guess you could try different lights with different colour temperatures to see which one you prefer. The slightly more yellow ones show colour a bit more I think. " cool white" Vs "warm white" etc...

it alters the beam spread etc but not the frequency of the light.
i have repaired 1400 plus spotlights so far and the differences between each batch is amazing, from yellow to blue is the norm

What Rugerman said. My Maxtoch dedomed torches will show cattle (and deer) up very well out to 800ish m. But its not just the color, a great hunting torch has to have the right lens shape to give you a tight beam plus 'spill', so you can see a lot around the edges of the beam. Also allows you to use the edge of the beam on jumpy animals, instead of blinding them with a direct super powerful spot. GM and mudgripz did a shitload of development work on just this subject, hence their creations are pretty much regarded as the 'gold standard' for monster spotlight capability in a small torch size package

For floundering I found the led light wasn’t very good, the flounder were much easier to see with the old school bulb light which was more yellow.

I have two long range hunting lights. One is a Maxtoch 2X which has a warmer white light, and the other is another Chinese brand with a very stark white beam.
The Maxtoch is definitely the light I always use, just because it does highlight rabbits better, and is nicer to look at generally.
Both lights are good out past 1000M, have very similar beam patterns, so the only difference really is the colour tint of the LED.

Originally Posted by XR500

What Rugerman said. My Maxtoch dedomed torches will show cattle (and deer) up very well out to 800ish m. But its not just the color, a great hunting torch has to have the right lens shape to give you a tight beam plus 'spill', so you can see a lot around the edges of the beam. Also allows you to use the edge of the beam on jumpy animals, instead of blinding them with a direct super powerful spot. GM and mudgripz did a shitload of development work on just this subject, hence their creations are pretty much regarded as the 'gold standard' for monster spotlight capability in a small torch size package

I've got one of their M1 Archer torches, best small handtorch ever, means I'm carrying a spare battery for my headlamp (HO1R) at the same time.

Just shoot them in the daylight, problem solved!

They had that issue with LED surgical lamps early in in the history of LED lights. Poor tissue definition. Solved then by adding a few red LEDs to the arrays. Should be unnecessary to do with modern LEDs, but problem is that the brightest LEDs sell best, "XXXX" lumens vs "XXX" lumens, the problem is the brightest are brightest because they have a dominance of blue light.

White LEDs are blue led's (the brightest of all LEDs) with a screen over them which transmits the underlying blue light, but also absorbs some of it and emits another colour, which together with blue gives an illusion of white. So the the less non-blue, the more lumens you can advertise. But they are blue lumens.

One poor man's solution is to use an orange or pink highlighter on the inside of the plastic window over the LED array. You just want more red in there - but you can achieve this by filtering out more of the blue.

Originally Posted by 7mmsaum

Used a brand new Ford Ranger last week and the headlight tint has to be the best I have ever seen

Could see deer out to 400m and easily put the crosshairs where needed

Find out what that tint spectrum is, if that’s the right word for it

That be good for shooting all those Kaweka Sika I guess,.on that note will we get a 2022 update on your Kaweka sika thread,.really miss them

Hamish

Sent from my SM-G996B using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by XR500

What Rugerman said. My Maxtoch dedomed torches will show cattle (and deer) up very well out to 800ish m. But its not just the color, a great hunting torch has to have the right lens shape to give you a tight beam plus 'spill', so you can see a lot around the edges of the beam. Also allows you to use the edge of the beam on jumpy animals, instead of blinding them with a direct super powerful spot. GM and mudgripz did a shitload of development work on just this subject, hence their creations are pretty much regarded as the 'gold standard' for monster spotlight capability in a small torch size package

They are worthy of their real designation as the CHCH Pixies. Gifted dudes who caused lotsa deer to die and for those with the magic Pixie Maxtoch many still die.

Yep and a little rugerman waits for them to come up with their new design
Actually it was ManualMan off the other forum from Wellington who dedomed mine . Not sure if he's on this forum.