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LED Aesthetics: What do you really think of your color?


Machupicchu

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adding the colored stones is a big step in the right direction for color rendition.

 

there are color-charts/color-wheels out there as well that are less glossy and might work very well for you.

 

I know that the high-wattage lights are great for getting punch down into the tank, but I wonder if it wouldn't work better (and be cheaper) to do a string of 5mm red LED (or even amber) to get some of the coloration that people want to see in a diffuse way without unpleasant spotlighting.

 

I'm thinking that you could do a string of 4-12 red leds that would just add some glow, especially higher in the tank.

 

 

 

here's a nice example of a color chart that would *ahem* shed some light ;) on the topic

 

color-chart.png

link to above: http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/respat/color-chart.png

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good stuff guys keep it coming.

I think to put this into more of a practical setup in which not only the most hardcore of led fans would put together, we need to scale this down to what would render the best color, while still being able to run it on 2 dimmer channels, maybe 3 at most for larger setups. Also i think if we could sum it up in 3 or 4 bulb combinations this would be the best way to go.

It seems like the base standard CW and RB combo should still be kept as your main lighting while adding maybe 20-25% NW to CW and CB to RB. And if one red can do the job of NWs then maybe we could do one red per string of whites.

 

I love all of the ideas and info, but as evil was saying i think to make it more of a practical concept we need to look into keeping it simple also. Not the research as much but the actual concept.

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Im wondering if a lot of the washing out people are seeing can also be explained by corals reacting to the more intense light?

 

My acans looked washed out for the first month after being put under leds. They looked drab and grey. I put some eggcrate over the tank and left the leds on less and the acans are slowly getting better and better looking. The greys are turning to blue and the reds are getting brighter. Deffinately not looking washed out anymore. Other corals near the top are looking washed out.

 

Maybe we are putting too much light over our tanks and corals are responding? Im not saying this is THE explanation, but that it could be one of the factors.

 

All my corals are growing much better than under t5s and the colors are SLOWLY getting better. I am using cree xr-e 6500ks and cree xr-e royal blues. My 6500ks look VERY yellow to me without the royal blue. Certainly not white on their own, but turn crisp white when turned up near full blast once the royal blues are on.

 

Matt

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Orphek's new light looks really good in person, as the LEDs have a very good spectral output (review, pics, and spectrophotometer report on my blog). I still think the typical Cree combination looks good, though. Like Evil mentioned in another post, yes we are missing out on some things when it comes to light, but it starts to get very impractical very quickly when you're trying to reach a "holy grail" of light color and wavelength.

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I have been struggling for a few days now on how to arrange the LEDs on my heatsink and keep good coverage with all the colors. So far I have come up with breaking my heatsink in half (not literally). Both are mirror images of each other and will have low angle reflectors surrounding them. I got this idea form looking at some lighting fixtures that have multiple halides in them. I could go even further and break the heatsink into fourths. I am very open to comments and suggestions with this

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Evil after i get these 8 bulbs and have them for 2-3 months and figure out if they help color or not

 

i might look into a custom bulb thats 1 cool blue, 1 royal blue and 3 cyan

 

i told nick they should just offer 1 PAR38 bulb with 1 cool white, 1 neutral white, 2 royal blue and 1 cool blue in 1 bulb, IMO this bulb would be the perfect combo for a PAR38 from seeing what blend i've got over my own tank or take out 1 royal blue and replace it with a cyan

 

this would offer you 5 spectrums in 1 bulb which isn't a bad idea ;)

 

We have a lot of plans in the works for the PAR38's as far as color options, but it will take a little while to get everything straight. I'm sure some of the options will be following along the lines of this current discussion. Right now though, we are limited in what we can do with the current setup. Most of it is from the want of cyan as an LED color. Cree no longer offers cyan (although I hear the green is more cyan than green), and because the XR-E's have a unique solder pad configuration, nothing else will fit without scabbing it in. That's something I'm not prepared to do, so I have some design work ahead of me :)

 

This discussion is moving forward in a good way though. Experimenting like this got us this far, so it can only take us further. We do need to play this out methodically and responsibly. We don't need to go out and start blindly recommending random color configurations until it's been tested and proven to be safe. While messing with this seems harmless at first glance, it's probably not too hard to saturate our corals with excessive amounts of certain wavelengths and cause potential damage that I'm sure someone will get PO'd about. Cyan and red LEDs are VERY efficient at producing light in their respective wavelengths.

 

Like I've mentioned before, getting all this to blend will be the trick. The typical grid approach isn't going to work too well with anything more than 3 seperate controllable color ranges (I lump royal and cool blue together, as well as cool and neutral white together, as those typically won't be controlled seperately). A clustered approach could work with very tight spacing on the LEDs.

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I dont think anyone is blindly throwing out colors at this point (I may have got excited at one point but retracted). I think we understand that we need to test this out just as anything that is new. But I somewhat disagree on hitting our tanks with wavelengths that can cause damage. Yes anything in extreme excess will not be good but I dont think anyone is suggesting that.

 

Looking at this spectrometer read out of a Iwasaki 400-watt 6,500K metal halide lamp you can see that it puts out a good amount of cyan light.

Figure2.jpg

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I am working on a custom rectangle and square mcpcb for mounting. This would place the led's very close to each in a cluster. I hope to have a few to test in the next few weeks.

 

-Dave

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honestly just placing 2 cyan leds with 1 royal blue and 1 cool blue and 1 cool or neutral white would be a good PAR38 combo bulb IMO this would blend most of the colors together so you'd get a mix, without the cyan or blues over powering each other and then the white would offset both os these colors tonning them down

 

IMO this would be eye pleasing

 

or 1 cyan, 2 royal blue, 1 cool blue and 1 neutral or cool white

 

This would be a good combo as well

 

IMO cool white, nuetral white, royal blue and cool blue have already been proven to have good results and effects over my 200g DD

 

I'm think i need another color to inhance the Powder blues and powder purples IMO Cyan would do this perfectly and it blended with the other leds the color should look good visually as well

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I dont think anyone is blindly throwing out colors at this point (I may have got excited at one point but retracted). I think we understand that we need to test this out just as anything that is new. But I somewhat disagree on hitting our tanks with wavelengths that can cause damage. Yes anything in extreme excess will not be good but I dont think anyone is suggesting that.

 

Looking at this spectrometer read out of a Iwasaki 400-watt 6,500K metal halide lamp you can see that it puts out a good amount of cyan light.

Figure2.jpg

I'm not pointing fingers. I'm more saying it so that all involved are aware. It can be easy to get excited about good results. We just don't need to jump the gun.

 

honestly just placing 2 cyan leds with 1 royal blue and 1 cool blue and 1 cool or neutral white would be a good PAR38 combo bulb IMO this would blend most of the colors together so you'd get a mix, without the cyan or blues over powering each other and then the white would offset both os these colors tonning them down

 

IMO this would be eye pleasing

 

or 1 cyan, 2 royal blue, 1 cool blue and 1 neutral or cool white

 

This would be a good combo as well

 

IMO cool white, nuetral white, royal blue and cool blue have already been proven to have good results and effects over my 200g DD

 

I'm think i need another color to inhance the Powder blues and powder purples IMO Cyan would do this perfectly and it blended with the other leds the color should look good visually as well

It's very possible that cyan can work very well pulling certain colors out, but like I mentioned before, cyan LEDs are very powerful. If they were to be used in something like a PAR38, it would be difficult to reduce the current of individual LEDs with just a single fixed current output. For DIY applications, it's obviously not as hard, as it's simple to run them on a seperate channel and dial to what's necessary. It's going to take some work and some research, but we'll get there.

 

 

Here is why I'm a little concerned about cyan. If you take a look at the current Luxeon Rebel lineup, you will see that the top bin cyan LEDs put out 110lm at 700mA. While this doesn't sound like much compared to white LEDs that are pushing 200lm at the same current, the white LEDs spread that energy over a much wider spectrum, lowering the relative intensity at any give wavelength. The cyan at 110lm, and a very narrow spectral output is very powerful by comparison. It's just something to consider.

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Like evil said. I am now running my cyan and red around 250mA. They are VERY powerful for just a single color. You can imagine that some people will try and run the Cyan at full power too! 1000mA!!!

 

Have you tried putting the LED's over a tank yet?

 

-Dave

Here is why I'm a little concerned about cyan. If you take a look at the current Luxeon Rebel lineup, you will see that the top bin cyan LEDs put out 110lm at 700mA. While this doesn't sound like much compared to white LEDs that are pushing 200lm at the same current, the white LEDs spread that energy over a much wider spectrum, lowering the relative intensity at any give wavelength. The cyan at 110lm, and a very narrow spectral output is very powerful by comparison. It's just something to consider.
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I'm currently using Cool Whites and Royal Blues with a single Red in the middle. Red led runs in the same string as the whites and I really like the color. The whites are dimmed to 35% while blues at 50%. I'm currently waiting on 4 Neutral Whites to swap some Cool Whites and see what happens. So far I'm loving the SPS growth and coloration.

DSC_0971.jpg

DSC_0937.jpg

 

will post more when I install the new LEDs

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Ah ha! Theres sammys tank. The color looks great. Interested to see what NWs do.

 

I hear alot of people running their blues way higher than their whites. This gives me the windex kind of look. I run mine at almost 1:1 ratios. 35% whites and 40% blues. Looks almost exactly like the 14k PCs i was running before except more pop and a little more purple.

 

Honestly the only colors im missing with this ratio is the pastel and red/orange colors. I still cant decide if want to go 1 red or a few NWs.

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i use cool blue, royal blue, cool white and neutral white

 

my orange monti setosa has great color, and i had a small piece of red cap that did fine as well as my Red planet still being red

 

i don't think we need red leds to get Oranges and Reds to look good, they look great with just cool blue/royal blue and a combo of cool and neutral white

 

IMO the hardest thing is to get purples to stay purple an blues to stay blue, IMO cyan is the only color that would be nesscessary to add to the mix to keep these colors, i also think it would help the more pastel colors out

 

The ocean looks green at the top when you look at it, corals under the water are in greenish tinted water, so i think adding a different blend of Blue/Green would work out wonderful

 

A mix of cool blue/royal blue and cyan would workout great IMO

 

i hope that some day i can add some cyan to my setup to see if it's whats missing from the spectrums since cool white and neutral white do spike in red to a degree and since my reds and oranges have looked great since the start of my 200g it leads me to believe we need more green/blue in different spectrums

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Neutral White LEDs installed :) done quicker than I though. You can't really see much of a difference with bare eyes between CW and NW. With a picture, is another story. Here's a cel phone pic. Will snap a few shots later with my dslr

348e7189.jpg

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I think I have to claim 'guilty' to starting this thing with neutral-white LEDs. Personally I find 2:1 RB:neutral yields the best color, IMHO, and strongly mimmicks 20k halides, although some people might find it too 'purply'. This is why I tell people when they build a light to try a few color clusters first and see what they prefer.

 

A lot of this is also due to the fact that most high performance Cree's sold in CW flavors are very high CCT. Typically over +6000k CCT, or the garden variety that places like DX sells. The tanks I've seen that lack good color are often the ones using the really high flux Cree's (>6000 CCT), while the better ones are using lower CCT Crees (WG?) and Bridgelux (5600k). At least to my eyes, the difference between 6500 and 5500k Crees is huge, and it makes a difference on reef tanks with the warmer versions providing more depth, IHMO.

 

Another thing I've been playing with is various incarnations of blue LEDs and seeing what their effect is over various corals in terms of color. It also helps I now having something deeper than standard royals to play with in the form of 10watts that to my eyes are around 445nm. I sent one to Evil so he can do some test on it and see exactly where it ends up.

 

Anyways, I tried the '445', standard CREE RB (prolly around 450), and a 465-470nm standard blue which is starting to get into that 'windex' category. I found that the '445' and Cree RB yielded similiar results in terms of actinic reflection on the same colors. The main difference being the 445 was significantly more violet looking and lacked the visual punch of the RB. This being likely because we're sliding further away from our photopic sensitivty curve, but Evil's tests will confirm or deny it.

 

However, the more cyaninsh of the bunch started to 'excite' different colors, particularly rusts and oranges in zoanthids while the deeper blue LEDs didn't. On the flip side the more cyanish LED started to blue other colors together. For instance, I have vivid green and blue candy canes, and cyanish LED had trouble distinguishing them apart while the deeper blue LEDs didnt. Another problem is just like Evil said in that blue-cyan LEDs are very, very bright to our eyes and can turn your tank into a big bottle of Windex without too much effort. At the most I might try a string of low powered 465-470nm LEDs on a dimmer (my other ratios are set), but it's a very tricky color to deal with because it screws up color fast.

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Thanks for all the info blaster. You really have helped a ton of us out with the NW. I cant stand the look of the CW's anymore.

 

I went to a frag swap to show off my LED units and controller and people were flipping over the colors. I had my small uni-body set-up with the following config...

 

4 NW

7 RB

1 Cyan

 

Using all Rebel's with 40 degree optics @ 3' above the tank. I'll post some photo's soon because the color what THAT impressive.

 

Anyways I think the LED's are here and ready to take over!

 

-Dave

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I know since I reviewed the Orphek PR-156 that I'm spoiled by their new LEDs, and definitely couldn't use Cree CW and RB's anymore. Under Orphek's new diodes there are actually purples and reds (my purple carpet anemones don't look purple under the usual Cree LED lights)! Hopefully this is the case with NW/RB combos, as well.

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I read some reviews on the Orphek, and am trying to put together what they are using for white LED's, which seems to be some big industrial 'secret' according to them. They claim 'high CRI' whites but the spectral graphs I saw showed it to be identical to a low CCT standard CW. Pictures look nice and neutral.

 

I though about trying some Seoul, 4000k high CRI's at one time, but didn't think it would make a difference.

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It's an invitation to 'disco' academy, IMHO if the light is too low.

 

Today I spent another couple of hours goofing around with LED combos and seeing what kind of trouble I could get into with the those 10watt 445's. I found when I mixed them with a 5600k Bridgelux 402 at half power the light was damn near identical to one of the 14000k halides I was looking at today at the reef shop. I don't remember what brand of bulb it was, but I have pretty good eyes and I swear I could easily fool 9/10 reefers with this combo thinking it was a halide. A couple of CW crees on the warmer side of that category would accomplish the same thing. Been beating my head agains't the wall though trying to find a far blue emitter that can keep up with the big Bridgelux.

 

I tried some XR-Es that were typical 6000k (maybe a bit higher) and the look was quite a bit different.

 

What I think would really be interesting is if we had some white emitters that started at around 470nm rather than typical 450-455, and then our RB's would balance it out. If you think about it, adding RB to a cool-white emitter just kind of overlaps the far blue spike. Halides seem to have a broader blue range than LEDs and this might be part of the problem/

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Thanks for the input blasterman. I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I'll be trying out over the next week or so, and I'll be sure to publish any and all findings that I can come up with on spectral data and color rendition.

 

To everyone else, I have talked with blasterman privately about the possibility of coming up with an LED library of sorts, and it seemed to be a worthwhile idea. Now, I'm sure much of the information will be way over most heads, but at the least, it will offer a direct head to head comparison of all the LEDs we commonly use. What I would like to have available for the library is the spectral plot, dominant wavelength, relative and absolute intensity, CRI (where possible), CCT (where possible), and PAR values (I have a little trick up my sleeve here too). All LEDs will be run at certain nominal values for their class, no optics, and at fixed distances for consistancy. Seem like a good plan? I already have a decent selection of LEDs at home, but I may need some help with others. As we start building the library, I may call on some of you generous reefers (;)) to donate LEDs to the cause, if you have spares.

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Evil - I will have a custom 1" square three up board here soon. Its being made for myself. I can let you borrow one. Two Royal + NW Rebels. I should have them in 2-3 weeks.

 

-Dave

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