limited production :: hand crafted :: high performance :: rechargeable :: premium flashlights

This is my blog about creating a startup LED flashlight business. I'm a designer, fabricator, and strategist and I'm passionate about making ideas real. I believe that products are about people, that they should be built to last, deliver real value, and that we need to do a better job than we have in the recent past.

Most of my career has been contract or freelance work and I've crafted products and strategies for both big international companies and startups. I also used to work in the "industry" fabricating special effects for film and TV, along with the occasional hot rod. Bottom line, I love making things.

I'm starting this blog so you can follow along, from day one, and see what it's like to start a business, or fail in the process. Only time will tell, but I hope you find this interesting enough to stay tuned, comment, link, like, tweet, and (most importantly) participate in turning this idea into something tangible and valuable.

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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Comparing LED color temperatures

So when you look at a data sheet and order a 4500K LED you know what you are getting right? Right? Wrong. With respect to LED bins, tints, and output specs we research a world of absolutes but we live in world of ambiguity. I took the photo below to illustrate the point. The same color temperature in different model LEDs looks different.

LEFT (MCE 6500K & 4500K) / RIGHT (XML 6500K & 4500K)
On the left is the Cree MCE in 6500K and 4500K. On the right is the Cree XML in 6500K and 4500K. I don't care what the data sheet says because the look different and that's all that counts. I don't bring this up to say it's bad in any way, I just mean that we should be aware that these sorts of things are not at all absolute. There are a lot of variables that go into the appearance of LED light. We haven't talked about tint for example. But my point is that you shouldn't expect to different models of LED, with the same specs on paper, to appear the same to your eyes in real life.

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