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

[jackjackjack]

Hey guys, read this thread all the way through, some great info in there.

Im about to make a light for a 1' cube frag tank and am wondering if you guys can give me any advice as to the layout of the LEDs? all the LEDs will be 3w cree's, whites will be xpg's, blues xpe's and the cyan a 3XL.

I will be using 6 Neutral whites 1 warm white 10 royal blues 2 cool blues and 1 cyan.

all leds will be run at 700mA with blues and whites on seperate dimmable drivers so i can adjust the blue/white ratio and the brightness (as im sure this amount of LEDs over a 1'cube is massive overkill, but its a trial light for a bigger tank)

Heres the intended layout

[Genj]

I'm thinking that a warm white, beside a cyan is going to look pretty nasty. I'm not the expert, but it seems that you might have a spot of color there that might just look very strange.

[DaveFason]

Take the WW and Cyan out. Replace with either RB or NW.

 

Move the Blue's in the middle of the grouping too. This way everything should blend better.

 

-Dave

[wfournier]

I just thought I would add to this thread as I have been playing with a couple things lately. I have a fixture over a 60 cube (24^3) that consisted of 6 CW 8 RB 6CB 4 XP-G WW, the warm white was just too much, even dimmed there was not the red/green punch that I wanted. I replaced the XP-G's with a 920 lumen Bridgelux NW LED and I think the color is much better now. The NW has a lot more green in it than the CW or WW did and makes a nice contrast.

[Machupicchu]

Jack, if its a frag tank and not for display i might just use 3 PAR bulbs. Unless you need the extra color pop.

[jackjackjack]

Thanks for the input guys.

Main reason im worried about the aesthetics of a light for a frag tank is that its a test unit for a 72 LED build for my main tank. So i'll be playing around with a few things and have ordered lots of extra LEDs to mix and match.

I think your right with the warm white (although i'll probably put one in initially to see what it looks like) but i want to try out the cyan.

Dave: when you say to move the blues to the middle of the grouping did you mean something like this?:

[MDreefer]

I think you may find that combination to be not quite blue enough, but it depends on your personal preference a lot.

[jackjackjack]

i dont think it would be either with both whites and blues at 100%, but they will be on individual dimmers so i can change the blue:white ratio.

[MDreefer]

yea, that's nice to have the flexibility, but at least for me, i'd rather put it together in a combination that is a good color when they are run together, and then just do a little bit of fine tuning with the dimmers. But that's just me.

[jackjackjack]

thats the idea of this build, to work out what combination i like before i start on the bigger build so i can get that one right. i know the conventional wisdom is 2rb:1nw so i went slightly more white than that and can just dim down the whites until i find the exact ratio i like.

[MDreefer]

Sounds like a plan to me. Just making sure you knew you were slightly outside the "norm", but there is nothing wrong with that, in fact, that is really what this thread is all about.

 

Good luck!

[blasterman]

I replaced the XP-G's with a 920 lumen Bridgelux NW LED and I think the color is much better now.

 

That'll do it :-) I'd like to see pics if possible.

[blasterman]

I also just shot a video of my softie tank (backside) with my 60D, and perhaps this gives a better perception of color. Maybe not quite as red, but close. I got the fire shrimp to freak out by throwing some flake in the tank.

 

It's a penninsular tank, but the backside looks better.

[rockryno]

Got my array finished. went with 8x 3w Cree royal blue, and 4x 3w Cree neutral whites.

 

Im not too happy with the finished product though...the problem is the tank is now a 70s disco club! all over the rocks and sand is white and blue flashes! its hard to look at up close. I actually spaced the LEDs closer that the recommended 2" and still get color shadows galore. Think height of the array above the water has something to do with it, but i cant go any higher...

 

Both colors are dimmable, and ive got it settled at around a 20k bulb look. noticed my heat sink gets pretty warm, so i might have to add a fan. The 8 blues are pretty overpowering. Ive got my whites up to maybe 25% and the blues to maybe 15% and its still pretty purple. thinking of adding a string of cool white right down the center...

 

LEDs mounted. Liked the heatsink cuz its got a groove, which ill slide a glass plate into to protect everything.

 

mounted at the top of the bookshelf. camera makes em look super purple for some reason. Its not that purple in person. The neutral whites are pretty yellow, glad i only got 4, but like i said, think the tank could benefit from a few more whites...

 

excuse the temporary wiring mess

 

Ill finalize the install in the next few days and clean everything up and see how i like it. and ill try to get better pics

[DaveFason]

Like we have said in past posts, you have to keep LED's close together or in clusters.

 

RB RB RB RB

NW NW NW NW

RB RB RB RB

 

If you only have the whites turned to 25% and its still to blue why not turn them up more?

 

-Dave

 

EDIT: Sorry the combo is not showing up how I wanted it.

[blasterman]

I'm wondering if he's having trouble getting his neutrals to keep up because they are older flux XR-E's / XP-E's? The K2's (TFFC) I'm using are brighter than any non XP-G Cree neutral I have. I'm even considering bumping them up to XP-Gs because I'd like them to be a bit brighter.

 

Tempted to set an un-official standard in that we should stick to Neutral XP-Gs, or at least premium flux older Crees to keep up with the blues.

 

Odd that's he also getting disco floor color with bare emitters. As you can see from my video my color is seamless, but my LEDs are also touching and in clusters.

 

Also, I have the same issue with showing color on camera. My/your tank do not look like Fiji Purples on steroids. It's because digital sensor cutoffs can't make sense of far blue. Even shooting in AdobeRGB doesn't help.

[evilc66]

Raising the fixture a little more may help, but probably not much. Rockryno, color banding will always exist, regardless of the setup. The only thing that will change with reducing the spacing, is minimizing the effect. Seeing as we will always be dealing with individual discrete colors, it's always going to be an issue.

[DaveFason]

Blaster - The newest NW XP-E's are pretty close to the XP-G NW. That is what I went with. Again I think if he is only running them at 25% he can bump them up.

 

If this helps : If you can order the following in XP-E. Part # XPEWHT-L1-0000-00DE4 ( Lot 4CQ5 ) 107 Lumens. The highest XP-G in NW is 122 Lumens.

 

-Dave

[jfarabaugh]

I think the spacing, layout, and ratio is not helping you out.

 

Also unless you have a DSLR camera and know all the tricks you will not be able to capture the correct color your lights are producing.

 

I would swap out 2 blues for 2 whites and use the dimmers to control the mix IMHO

 

RB NW RB NW RB NW

 

NW RB NW RB NW RB

[blasterman]

The newest NW XP-E's are pretty close to the XP-G NW.

 

Yep. Gotcha.

 

My reason for sticking to XP-G's though is you don't have to play as much bin-bingo as older XP/XR. A lot of weak older XP/XR's out there.

 

I'd rec Bridgelux 240s, but they don't make that series in neutral.

[rockryno]

got a video of the tank.

 

10 gal with LEDs

 

of course the video didnt capture the purpleness that well. the neutral whites alone look really yellow.

 

Also while turning the pots up, i notice there is a big change at first, then as you keep turning, nothing appears to happen, then finally at the end of the turn it brightens a hair more. kinda uneven dimming?

 

i thought i had spaced them close enough, but apparently not. Im wondering if all the biocubes and nano cubes ob here have the disco ball effect too? Theyre all super close to the water with wider spacing...

 

and now that ive looked at it more, the FTS up in my post is pretty right on with the purple. I do have a nice SLR that shot with, and its about that purple. I have HID 20k lights in my bike and the color is almost identical hah

[blasterman]

Yeah, I see the problem in your video - 'Saturday Night Fever'.

 

Light on my tank is actually a bit lower, but as you can see from my video there's no disco problems. You have a bit more turbulance on the surface (shimmer), but I have my heads turned down a bit because a lot of surface agitation = more water top-offs.

 

Biggest difference, as I said above, is my emitters are touching to eliminate as much of the problem as possible.

[rockryno]

yea yours looks nice, saw your vid. i cas still pick up the white/blue light show, but not nearly as bad as mine. What if i add a row of whites in the middle? like 4 cool whites? would that balance anything out?

[evilc66]

Probably not. The issue still comes from the fact that we use individual colors to create the effect that we desire, and for every color, there will be a color shadow associated with it.

[vresor]

My BC14 is old school RB-CW mounted on like 2 inch centers and since it's a retro into the stock BioCube hood, the LEDs sit barely 2 inches above the surface. I don't see any color banding or Saturday Night Fever syndrome (and damn, that's a scary memory!). My second build was also stock RB-CW on a HeatSinkUSA mounted atop my Solana, so that's pretty close too. This time the spacing was in two LED clusters of one RB and one CW. Again, no color banding or disco look. I'm not sure what the difference is.

 

One thing's for sure though, digital images, be they stills or video, do not depict the reality of LED color at all. I've watched a couple of the recent videos posted in this thread and may shoot a coupe of my own tomorrow (it's the middle of the night and everyone is asleep now), but I suspect I won't be able to get the white balance close enough to make it worth uploading them.