As mentioned on this blog previously I am a self confessed ‘flashlight whore’. I’ve not done an audit for a long time and I don’t really care to either as I may even shock myself, lets just say I most likely own too many flashlights…
Doing lots of underground shots presents its own lighting problems, one of which is colour temperature. These new fangled LED’s although wonderfully bright seem to produce a very blue beam which tends to make the pictures suck. This issue gets further compounded when I use two or more different lights to paint a shot as you end up with differing ‘blueness’. Of course this all gets fixed later in post as I have to even up the Colour Temperature but what if you could get a flashlight with a ‘neutral’ temperature…?
The theory was to try something from the wonderful people at 4Sevens as they are a company started and run by a self confessed Flashaholic called David Chow who produced a Limited Edition run of Cool, Warm and Neutral temperature lights. Most of these are now discontinued but luckily I managed to pick up a 4Sevens Quark RGB Neutral White from Led Fire Torches.
The 4Sevens Quark RGB Neutral White also has another neat feature (the clue is in the name!!) and that’s a quad die emitter so it has a different colour in each corner (white, red, green, and blue) so I get to kill two birds with one stone:
A) Have a nice neutral light to paint with underground.
B) Try some Troy Paiva type stuff using the coloured die.
Quark RGB Neutral White specs:
Length: 4.8 in
Diameter: 0.86 in
Weight: 1.8 oz (without batteries)
Finish: Type-III hard-anodized aircraft-grade aluminum
Batteries: 2 CR123A
(All lumen outputs are COOL WHITE, Out-the-front)
* Moonlight: 0.4 lm, 650 hours, 1 ma
* Low: 2.8 lm, 130 hours, 10 ma
* Med: 15.0 lm, 25 hours, 50 ma
* High: 58.4 lm, 7.5 hours, 250 ma
* Turbo: 150 lm, 2 hours, 700 ma
* SOS: 22.5 hours
* Strobe: 4 hours
* Beacon: 20 hours
From 4Sevens:
The Quark RGB features a CREE MCE-RGB emitter. The MCE-RGB is a quad-die emitter that features a different color for each corner of the die: white, red, green, and blue!
The Quark RGB UI is unique. When the head is tightened, it is always white (or neutral white depending on your model). When the head is loosened, it is one of the RGB colors. Cycling between loose and tight will toggle through the three colors.
The way to change modes is similar to the regular Quarks. Just tap the tail button to change modes (or just turn it on and off within 3-4 seconds). It will toggle between eight modes: moonlight -> low -> medium -> high -> max -> S.O.S -> strobe -> beacon.
Additionally, it will remember the last mode used even after you turn off the flashlight. It will also remember which mode you used in both the tightened and loosened state as well as which color was used in the loosened mode.
As soon as I get the chance I will be out testing this new toy 🙂
