They are getting better, Amazon sells general LED lamps which it claims have a CRI of 90+ and various video lights and panels which it claims have a CRI of 95+
Of course, how much you trust the rating of a generic Chinese product on Amazon is another matter entirely
We carried extensive testing at work involving 80 CRI and 97-98 CRI lamps. A lot of people could not tell the difference although it could affect their mood without them realising it. Roughly 50:50 was the split. Red is always the first part of the spectrum to breakdown in LED’s and the poor team member I tasked with checking 1400 lamps for red spectrum failure was not very happy. 78% of the lamps failed and these were 9-10 year old lamps, their red spectrum could have failed way before that but no one had checked. Our neighbours on the other hand had a team that regularly checked their lamps. My home lamps are colour tunable (to a point)
I’m not sure what you mean by “a washout” - colour temperature is independent of brightness. If you look at the “white balance” settings on digital cameras, in manual WB mode there is a Kelvin scale from around 2500K up to 9000K; the “daylight” preset usually falls at around 5600K on that scale, and flash units (whether studio flash or small on-camera flashguns) aim to emit “daylight balanced” lighting (with varying degrees of success).
2500K to 9000K roughly represents natural light from sunset (low K value and orange) up to an overcast day (9000K and blue).
For example earlier this morning I did a family portrait shoot on location with my portable studio flash units, and my camera was set to “daylight” white balance.
For home lighting on the other hand you may prefer a warmer (lower Kelvin value) colour temperature.
5600K is quite ‘cold’ and can give a rather stark appearance, even though colours look very neutral and balanced in that light. I think that for lighting an interior it’s often pleasing to go warmer, rather than neutral, so 4000K is nice even though it causes issues for photography.
Actually it doesn’t necessarily cause an issue - you can adjust the camera’s white balance to match the ambient lighting temperature if you want a neutral result, or go somewhere in between to get an image with a touch of warmth. When I photograph weddings I often have warm ambient light in the venue plus my flash adding neutral light on the people I am photographing.
It’s only a real problem if there is mixed lighting - i.e. natural light, tungsten lighting, plus (say) fluorescents.
If there is a light source of just one temperature then when taking photos you can either pick that specific colour temperature in the camera, or (easier) shoot RAW and adjust as needed in post!
(or, as with the example above, set the camera to daylight to match the flash exposure, and let the background “go warm”.)
In the 1980s I was asked to take some pictures inside a vaccine development area for my company (in retrospect it was odd because there was an excellent photographic team on the site) with a mix of natural, tungsten and fluorescent lighting. I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get sensible looking prints.
I agree about digital cameras and how easy it is to tweak colour temps & tints, although it can be a little tricky getting completely neutral colours in tungsten lighting. Nice pic though - I’m sure they were very happy with that.
Just as with HiFi, because you have a machine to measure it, does not mean you can hear it/see it.
No one complained about the red end of the spectrum missing on 78% of our lights, typical for me to throw the metaphorical cat amongst pigeons and actually test the old LED lights.
Then of course it became an issue. Emperors new suit of clothes?
People tolerate a lot of different things, especially in a work environment where they may feel they can’t speak out. We moved to a new building in 2022 - it’s enormous, very shiny, very flash. And it sucks as a workplace compared to the modest and slightly over-crowded place we came from, but everyone needs to toe the line.
Once upon a time, I had a hobby where night vision could be used if you had deep pockets.
Was always fun to watch someone who’d fitted an IR filter to their LED flashlight in order to use it as an IR illuminator trying to figure why it didn’t emit IR with the filter on.