UV light recommendation?

[r2]

My wife studies medieval art history and spends much of her time looking at 700-800 year old manuscripts. She sometimes needs to look at them under UV light and would like a compact light that she can always leave in her bag.

The Arc AAA would be perfect (she already carries a white AAA on her keychain), but the UV version has been out of production for a long time and all the dealers seem to be out. Anyone know of an exception?

What would you recommend? A compact LED light would be great, ideally one that uses standard AA or AAA cells. I'm not too fond of squeeze lights with button lithium cells because they always seem to get turned on in a bag or pocket and have dead batteries when needed, but this could be an option. Something with an on/off switch (not a momentary squeeze action) would be better, too.

We're both students so money is an important consideration.

Thanks for any suggestions!

- Russ

 

[Reptilezs]

http://peakledsolutions.net/aaa.html or http://peakledsolutions.net/aa.html

pick what battery type u want

 

[DBrier]

Anyone know what wavelenght they use in the Peak UV?
This one gets good reviews http://ledmuseum.jpoproductions.com/385-1.htm and is available for not too much on eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3101&item=8112921367
I am going to get one soon.

 

[Size15's]

Photon MicroLights come in UV as does the Inova X5.
Joe of ODS is a good UK torch retailer I've used recently
http://outdoorsuppliesuk.com/torches.html
He posts on British Blades if you want to check him out.

I suggest you email him to see if he can you a PhotonII in UV. The PhotonI doesn't have a constant-on model and I've not had much luck with the PhotonIII's.

I would have thought the best one to get is a PhotonII covert but I don't think they do that combination [in UV].

Al

 

[NewBie]

I'll try and remember to do an actual output spectral plot on my Peak UV on Monday. I'll go see if I can get a line spectrum of it right now.

Here we go. This is just spectral photo, the camera may not be responding really good up into the UV, note the purple fringe at the upper end, and the abrupt stop. I'll get more precise information on Monday. If I were to guess, they are using 405nm UV LEDs, which is alot better than a Dental Blue Luxeon for UV output. Most all the consumer UV LEDs are long wavelength UV like these, usually from 405-395. There are a couple of shorter wavelength UV LEDs, but they are not very common. Still, they are considered very long wavelength UV LEDs.

 

[Wingerr]

Neat picture- what's involved with getting that spectral plot?

I have one of these 385nm coin cell UV microlights and highly recommend it over the standard longer UV lights. The shorter wavelength is very different from the other UVED lights I have, in that only items that fluoresce are visible; with the others, they tend to get overwhelmed with the visible light.

What is the purpose in relation to old manuscripts? Wouldn't UV generally be something to be avoided with preservation in mind?

 

[r2]

Yes, normally they are carefully kept in a UV-free environment. Apparently manuscripts were often re-used or at least corrected by scratching out the old writing/illustrations and writing over top of them. UV light helps make the old stuff visible, as well as revealing other artifacts of the creation process. I don't know too much about it--I'm a computer science PhD student and old papers for me are more like 10 years old /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Thanks for all the tips! I'll find out what wavelength she needs as it sounds like this will have a direct effect on her choice of light.

Cheers,

Russ