Lumens to Footcandels

idleprocess

Flashaholic
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Feb 29, 2004
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decamped
Conversion between overall output (lumens) and intensity (lux, candella, footcandles) is not easy.

If I recall correctly, a lumen is 1 cd (or lux) per steridian within a sphere and there are 4 pi steridians per sphere.

I once devised a crude spreadsheet for converting mcd readings with a radiation pattern to lumens. It needs some work to simplify the calculations. One cell to calculate that all will be messy; perhaps I could get ambitious and get it down to a single row of calculations since many of those cells are static values I determined graphically, some are now vestigial, and some are both. Feel free to use or even improve upon it; I only request that you notify me of any improvements and send me the improved file.

As far as using that spreadsheet goes - enter max and minimum mcd for the LED (or put the nominal mcd twice to calculate and absolute rather than average) then look at the radiation chart and enter the relative intensity for each 5-degree sample point. The example in the spreadsheet is a Nichia NSPW515BS.
 
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winny

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
1,067
Location
Gothenburg, Sweden
idleprocess is absolutley right but I just wanted to clarify that it's only true for isotropic light sources which does not exist in reality.

Bottom line, you can NOT convert from lumen into footcandles or anything similar without knowing a lot about the beam spread. You can estimate it if you know your beam spread angle but what you really need is an integrating sphere for this.

"Candlepowers" -> lumen and similar questions are one of the most common newbie questions and I don't blaim anyone. It's not easy at all. I should write a guide for that someday mad make sure it becomes sticky...
 
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