Opinions on colored Luxeons...

After a recent trade I am now the owner of a few extra ARC LS lights.All of them work and I have managed to take the internals out to replace a crushed emitter on one of them.
It now has a nice Q3J however I left it unsealed for future modding.If I am staying at the factory current level what color Luxeon will best utilize this rating of current.I am seriously considering replacing this emitter with a colored one just for fun.I know some colors run at lower currents however I am not able to find anything on a search.
If any here have ARC Luxeons in colors what color do you have and why do you prefer it?I am partial to blue and the Cyan however I know that some greens also look very bright.I have never even seen a 1 watt colored and all I have to compare to are my colored 5 mm LEDs.
If you will give me some opinions on what colors I would best be served with using this board and body....Thanks for any help on this.
I also may consider adding an additional resistor to increase the current to 667 mA and if so will it still be safe to use a colored Luxeon?

I also have been looking for various beamshots of colored Luxeons with no luck.I tried Craigs site however he is having some type of trouble with his server as I get an error message.Any other sites here that have good information on colors in 1 or 3 watt luxeons?

My website should be back online now.
But I don't think I have photographs of anything other than white Luxeons. Let me go check that...BRB...nope, there are just a couple of beam photographs of white and warm white Luxeons, a spectrographic analysis of a white Luxeon, ProMetric charts from a white Luxeon, and a number of regular and macro photographs of the LEDs themselves.
Sorry about that. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

Hi Robocop, I will add my 2 cents for your question and leave you to your own to ponder what to actually do with the info.

White is actually not a very efficient LED "color" because it is composed of the original "blue" and the Phos converted yellow mix. There is argument about it, but physics shows that it will be very difficult to make a "white" as efficient as a single color LED.

Most people's eyes see Cyan very well (nominal 500nm), which is why this color is used in traffic lights. The other great color to see is red - orange - nominal 615 - 620 nm. The combination of EYE physiology and LED quantum physics makes these colors very good for LED efficiency and brightness.

I made a home made with both of these LEDs at the same time - pretty impressive. It is relatively easy to get S bin red-orange 1 watt emitters (virtually all these days) and a Vf of around 2.5 volts means long run time.

I also tried a test to not only "see" but "time to identify" objects with these colors
- white, blue, cyan, green red, red - orange, and a mix of cyan + red-orange.

Admittedly, the test was not scientifically controlled, and there were only 3 test subjects (myself, my unwilling wife, and equally un - interested daughter)

Nonetheless, we all came to the same conclusion
- White, dispite being 1/2 the brightness, gave the fastest identification of objects
- The Red + cyan was a close second, blue alone the worst.

With LED lights, there are really two questions - is the light "To be seen by others" or "To see with" ?

Robo,

I had an order from a guy in Alaska. He said that he was a hunting guide and ordered a light with a royal blue luxeon in it. He said that blood glows under a royal blue luxeon and makes tracking a wounded animal at night easier.

HarryN thank you for that detailed explanation as it does help out greatly.I have never had the opportunity to see a higher powered colored Luxeon in person and can only go by the 5 mm LEDs that I have.
I was mainly wanting to try this just for the novelty effect of it all as I do truly prefer a white beam.Thanks to you also Chop as I do kind of like the blue however the only experience I have with blue was my little Photon I carried for years...it did come in handy at times and was great for low light report writing in my car.
I am not sure if the ability to track a wounded animal will come in handy for me as I am not a hunter however I do find the softer light of an LED to be better suited for vehicle searches as my main incandescent beam creates a wash out effect and I have missed smaller items before when searching with this light.I do like my Turquois AAA and would really love to see a higher power 1 or 3 watt in this color....Anyway thanks for the imput here and I will probably go with the Cyan as I believe this most will resemble the color of the little turquois AAA.