Somewhat of a challenge (for me),
but was it worth -while or -less?
Got one of the closeout old style Inova X1 spot lights with blue LED from Fry's - which cratz2 very kindly sold me.
I've already written a short piece about its Form-Factor, Size, Ergonomics.
The only other blue LED I had was a "Frauxton" clone Photon coin cell light - yet I wanted to be able to describe its brightness and focussed spot by comparison with known lights.......
Size comparsion -
Heads/diameter comparison -
Compared to clone Photon "frauxton" Blue -
This shows one of the problems - the hotspot on both were so much brighter than the side-spill that they are grossly over exposed to show basically white. So unless it was made clear these were blue LEDs one may well mistake these for white LEDs with blue tints........
vs. River Rock 1.5w 2AA Spot - Standard 9" comparison beamshot -2 Stops Underexposed -
Because both the lights are spots and obviously limited to their spot beams - they have very little coverage - so the beamshot ends up showing two grossly over-exposed spots with the blue color lost - so it looks like two white LEDs even when taken with deliberate -2 stops underexposure.
OK I can solve that problem by moving the lights further away so that the spots have more coverage on the target paper -
vs. River Rock 1.5w 2AA at ~1.2metres/~4ft
OK this is more like the way I see the spots from more than about 3-4feet away.
An interesting point - at 9" away the Inova spot looks considerably smaller than the River Rock - but once moved more than about 3-4feet away the spots were then very similar in size.
But how do I equate the brightness? Afterall one is Blue and the other "white".....
Well, we can get rid of the color and just leave the brightness/luminance right?
Sounds like all one has to do is set the digicam to Black & White and take the beamshot, or post process and change the color photo to grayscale.....
B&W shot -2 Stops Underexposed
The blue spot looks considerably dimmer than the River Rock spot - and this is not what it seems (admittedly subjective), or from the color beamshot above
There's a major problem here - Black & White photography and greyscale conversion are panchromatic - in other words - shades of gray are used to represent color - so even if a blue is exactly the same brightness as a white - to be able to represent the blue it is shown as a shade of gray - therefore not a good representation of its true luminance or brightness.
Digital photography taught me that the color photographic image is made up of chroma/color (RGB) information and luminance/brightness information.
So how do I strip the chroma/color (RGB) information to leave only the luminance/brightness information?
Looking through my photo editor there was saturation adjustment - so if I were to UNsaturate the color would it leave me with just the luminance information?
Beamshots DEsaturated of color -
That, kind of looks more like it.......
compare the -2 stops underexposed UNsaturated shot with the B&W shot above......
vs. Fenix L1 v2.5
vs. Fenix L1 v2.5 DEsaturated of color -
I'm not sure if this proves anything worthwhile - but it was interesting (for me).
Even though the new version of the Inova X1 has now changed to a regular reflector to give a more generally useful beam - I personally think that the X1 is now just one of the "also-rans" - ie: nothing particularly special - if it wasn't for the fact that the spot version of the X1 was so unpopular - because of the expectation of something "better" - the reflector change would probably not attracted so much favorable attention - afterall all Inova have done is to correct a "mistake" - which (to be unkind) they shouldn't have made.
Conversely - the spot X1 should not have been quite as unpopular -
as its spot was very intense for a single 5mm LED, if my blue LED sample is any indication - so it was capable to throwing quite an intense spot from a 5mm LED that rivals a 1watt Luxeon reflectored light, or even a 1.5watt Jupiter lensed spot light......
Of course having done all this - I can't really think of any practical applications for a spot blue beam -
yes, blood trailing or forensics - neither of which I do.
So may be I'll freeze-pop it and mod it to a white LED.....
it's a matter of just getting over my inertia now.......
but was it worth -while or -less?
Got one of the closeout old style Inova X1 spot lights with blue LED from Fry's - which cratz2 very kindly sold me.
I've already written a short piece about its Form-Factor, Size, Ergonomics.
The only other blue LED I had was a "Frauxton" clone Photon coin cell light - yet I wanted to be able to describe its brightness and focussed spot by comparison with known lights.......
Size comparsion -
Heads/diameter comparison -
Compared to clone Photon "frauxton" Blue -
This shows one of the problems - the hotspot on both were so much brighter than the side-spill that they are grossly over exposed to show basically white. So unless it was made clear these were blue LEDs one may well mistake these for white LEDs with blue tints........
vs. River Rock 1.5w 2AA Spot - Standard 9" comparison beamshot -2 Stops Underexposed -
Because both the lights are spots and obviously limited to their spot beams - they have very little coverage - so the beamshot ends up showing two grossly over-exposed spots with the blue color lost - so it looks like two white LEDs even when taken with deliberate -2 stops underexposure.
OK I can solve that problem by moving the lights further away so that the spots have more coverage on the target paper -
vs. River Rock 1.5w 2AA at ~1.2metres/~4ft
OK this is more like the way I see the spots from more than about 3-4feet away.
An interesting point - at 9" away the Inova spot looks considerably smaller than the River Rock - but once moved more than about 3-4feet away the spots were then very similar in size.
But how do I equate the brightness? Afterall one is Blue and the other "white".....
Well, we can get rid of the color and just leave the brightness/luminance right?
Sounds like all one has to do is set the digicam to Black & White and take the beamshot, or post process and change the color photo to grayscale.....
B&W shot -2 Stops Underexposed
The blue spot looks considerably dimmer than the River Rock spot - and this is not what it seems (admittedly subjective), or from the color beamshot above
There's a major problem here - Black & White photography and greyscale conversion are panchromatic - in other words - shades of gray are used to represent color - so even if a blue is exactly the same brightness as a white - to be able to represent the blue it is shown as a shade of gray - therefore not a good representation of its true luminance or brightness.
Digital photography taught me that the color photographic image is made up of chroma/color (RGB) information and luminance/brightness information.
So how do I strip the chroma/color (RGB) information to leave only the luminance/brightness information?
Looking through my photo editor there was saturation adjustment - so if I were to UNsaturate the color would it leave me with just the luminance information?
Beamshots DEsaturated of color -
That, kind of looks more like it.......
compare the -2 stops underexposed UNsaturated shot with the B&W shot above......
vs. Fenix L1 v2.5
vs. Fenix L1 v2.5 DEsaturated of color -
I'm not sure if this proves anything worthwhile - but it was interesting (for me).
Even though the new version of the Inova X1 has now changed to a regular reflector to give a more generally useful beam - I personally think that the X1 is now just one of the "also-rans" - ie: nothing particularly special - if it wasn't for the fact that the spot version of the X1 was so unpopular - because of the expectation of something "better" - the reflector change would probably not attracted so much favorable attention - afterall all Inova have done is to correct a "mistake" - which (to be unkind) they shouldn't have made.
Conversely - the spot X1 should not have been quite as unpopular -
as its spot was very intense for a single 5mm LED, if my blue LED sample is any indication - so it was capable to throwing quite an intense spot from a 5mm LED that rivals a 1watt Luxeon reflectored light, or even a 1.5watt Jupiter lensed spot light......
Of course having done all this - I can't really think of any practical applications for a spot blue beam -
yes, blood trailing or forensics - neither of which I do.
So may be I'll freeze-pop it and mod it to a white LED.....
it's a matter of just getting over my inertia now.......
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