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What's the best color of lighted nock

47K views 35 replies 35 participants last post by  BowhunterT100  
#1 ·
What is your opinion of the best color for a lighted nock? I feel that my green sight pins show up earliest in the day. Is green also the best color for a lighted knock or is red better? Thank you in advance for your responses.
 
#8 ·
Firenock brand gives you many different choices but I find Red works the best over all for me followed by green, orange and blue for my next choices. Good luck with which ever you decide to choose. :thumb:
 
#10 ·
Man, you better hope Dorge with Firenock doesn't see this thread. He'll tell you real quick "red is most visible color to human eye. Think about it: if another color was more visible, all vehicle tail-lights would be that color". And then he'd give you a ton more information too. Very knowledgable guy. The red Firenocks are brighter than anything else I've ever seen. They're all we use now.

Dawg
 
#20 ·
There's a little more to the story... The reason we use red at night is so we're able to recognize that light, without over saturating our eyes and destroying our night vision. Technically, we see greenish the best.

Red is the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum, and conversely has the lowest frequency. (speed of light c = wavelength * frequency) The energy of an individual photon can be expressed as E = hv, where h is Planck's constant, and v is the frequency of the photon. The higher the frequency, the higher the overall energy for a given photon.

The retina in the human eye contains rods and cones, which tend to see light a little differently... Rods allow for vision in low light situations, but do not have nearly the same color sensitivity as cones. Of the cones in your eyes, ~65% are ideal for red, and ~35% for green, and a few percent for blue. That said, sensitivity isn't just a function of how many there are, but also a function of the energy of the incoming light.

Research literature suggests that the average human eye is most sensitive to ~555nm light during the day, and around 500nm at night. Or... Green-ish, and Cyan.

Image


Above chart backs that up fairly well. 555 corresponds well to the combined red/green peak, which when looking at the combined area under the curve, gives us the maximum sensitivity. The story is a little less clear at night, for cyan, but keep in mind that cones greatly lose sensitivity in the dark.

So.. end conclusion... shoot for green during the day, and cyan/green at night.
 
#11 ·
Just remember, it is not just a color, but a light. With color when you mix all 3 base color you got BLACK, with light, when you mix 3 base color you got White!

From my limited experience, the absolutely most visible color to a non color blind human is
PINK nock on red LED
follow by Red Nock on Red LED

Just for discussion
This is the list of visibility visible light/led light for normal vision from brightest to lowest on a NULL background (background that do not have any visibility, i.e. matt grey with same light reflection index as the light source), Red, Orange, Yellow, blue, green, and white

For efficiency of current LED technology stage,
The following is what I have found, Red, Green, Orange, Blue, Yellow, and White with (blue, green and white LED being the least efficient)
i.e. current LED technology is leaps and bounds compare to what is just 2 years ago. By next year, you can assure that the Firenock Red will stay lit for no less than 7 - 10 days at room temperature, with the same battery until the battery totally dies out compare to the current 24 hours. No Joke. It is even more amazing when the temperature drops, I have 4 LED in red had stay in the freezer at -3F for the last 12 days already and it is still lit! I shall see how long it lasted......

Blue is coming a long way, so is green.

One need to think of a color of light, not just a color. With light you look for enhancement, not contrast like color for differentiation. So a green light will show better on a green non lit background. So it would only make sense to use green on turkey, but then we added the reflective light from the sun to the equation, the red again wins in MOST cases, unless it is just before the sun is having effective on the reflective part! This can get complicated real fast. All in all, if one is not color blind, red is the best and a hint of red would be better than full red, thus pink on red is brighter as it allow more red light (620–750 nm) to pass.

For your information, for most double color blind, surprisingly beside blue, I discover that green nock on yellow light, which transmitter a more of a cyan (476-495nm) color is what seems to work better as they are the final color combination nock most color blind customer purchase after they looked at the light box said they see the best!
 
#13 ·
That is what happened when one was filming on a non focus beam LED. With a non focus beam, the more visible light is, the more it becomes a blur as you had found out, while the lower intensity light do show up better FOR NOW. Now think when you look into a flash light compare to spot light, I think you got the picture. Design of the light and how the light work is a very important part of a light nock! Not just some nock that would light up.
In case of Nockturnal the green will show up better in the film when both are new, but as the battery dies down, the red will be better! The plunger over LED design also does not help in this case.
 
#26 ·
#28 ·
I bought a pack of blue and can't see them at all. Green are by far the brightest in extreme low light, but red may be a better choice since it is generally not found in the woods.

As stated before, human eyes pick up green light the best, which makes since with it being in the center of the visible spectrum. I would bet the manufacturers use at least twice a higher wattage led bulb in a red nock to equal a green. Hence the shorter battery life with the red nocks.

Has anyone tried white?