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07/31/2010, 10:46 AM | #1 |
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LED Color Aesthetics: The Emperor’s got no clothes. Or does he?
I’ve just finished my DIY LED fixture; 12 XR-E Cool Whites, 12 XR-E Royal Blues. Apex dimming to provide and mix of those two color lights that I desire. It’s the first time I’ve seen all LED lighting over my tank, and honestly, I’m not impressed.
Sure, when I crank the blue and turn down the white there are AMAZING colors popping in my tank that I’ve never seen before. But then you are in that heavy blue world that to me looks like an aquarium in a Tim Burton dream. If you want something that comes close to natural sunlight at shallow depth, the whites wash everything out. The colors that aren’t “popping” from the Royal Blues all look flat and washed out. In all the hours and hours I’ve spent reading about LEDs to get this constructed, why have I not run into a thread dealing with the truth about the esthetics of LED color? Maybe no one wants to admit that for a “white” tank LEDs compare somewhat poorly to nice a Metal Halide/T5 or PC mix? For contrast my tank normally runs a 150w 20k DE Radium on a Orbit ballast, supplemented with a pair of actinic PC bulbs. And while not the best Raduim, nor the best ballast, it doesn’t look half bad IMO. Good color, nice saturation, not too blue. I’ve also got a 250w 20k SE Radium in a Lumen Bright pendant driven by a Lumatek 250/400w dimmable ballast. I don't use it, but have hung it just to check the difference between it and my normal lighting. And honestly it was not a dramatic change. But in contrast – if I ignore the black light like excitation of certain fluorescent corals – these XR-E Cool Whites look flat and washed out in comparison. At least to my eyes. Are there people out there with similar experiences? Disappointment with your LEDs vs. your MH, unless you skew the mix into that spooky blue space?
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07/31/2010, 11:05 AM | #2 |
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You're running 20k and complaining about blue? I don't get it.
I built a DIY array for my 14g nano as well. 6 cree CW's and 5 RB's. I had been running a 150w HQI 20k halide over it. When I put the LED's over it and adjusted them properly, there was very little discernible difference in color. I can't recall the exact mix I used - perhaps 50% dimming on the whites and 65 0r 70% on the blues? The color was perhaps a bit more blue than the 20k, but the actinic pop was WAY more intense, certainly not flat at all. My new AI modules produce a very white light, and they are perhaps not blue enough for my liking. Color rendition under these is definitely a bit 'flatter' than under the old halide. Certainly not the DIY array, though. I dunno - play with the settings. The color might take a bit of getting used to as well.
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07/31/2010, 11:20 AM | #3 |
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I think this is a great discussion to have. Some people have stated that a 1:1 ratio on whites to blues cause a washout appearance but with your ability to regulate voltage should allow you to find the coloration you want.
Have you tried using optics with your XR-E Royal Blue LEDs? On this thread, http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...1852268&page=6 lucasabao has recently placed LEDs over his tank and has had decent success with them.
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07/31/2010, 11:30 AM | #4 | ||||
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But my complaint is not about the blue, per se. It's about the color wash out from the whites. Quote:
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And as you said, maybe it's getting used to. But I don't think so. When I switched to Radiums from a Phoenix, that didn't take getting used to. It was BETTER. And when I added the Actinics, that didn't take getting used to. It was BETTER. With these two LEDs colors, in the blends I've used so far that washing out of the non-fluorescing colors is enough that I'm having a tough time calling this better. Different would be a better word. But then, it's all just a personal judgment, isn't it? Thanks for the feedback!
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07/31/2010, 11:33 AM | #5 | |
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I've got 40 degree optics now, so I've got to raise the light rather high. I've got some 60's too, I could swap them out and lower the light, but I'm not sure what that would achieve.
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07/31/2010, 11:59 AM | #6 |
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I wonder if you could get around the 'white-wash'-out issue by removing some of the optics from just the white emitters? If you're experiencing that much wash out, I wonder if teh white is too focused at depth... if you remove half of your white optics and allow slightly greater spread, O wonder if this will help the situation?
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07/31/2010, 12:05 PM | #7 | |
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But I'll try. Thanks for the suggestion. Oh.. BTW, I should mention. In this current testing situation my Apex is not hooked up, and I'm driving the meanwell dimming with 9V batteries on pots. Those batteries are only at about 8.5v right now, so I'm only up to about 75% of the brightness these LEDs are capable of running that their current setting of 750 mA. So this is NOT a the situation of blindingly bright LEDs that you see so often here. In fact - to my eyes - running all 24 at that 75% brightness is not as bright as my 150w Radiums with the 2 Actinics.
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07/31/2010, 12:55 PM | #8 |
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I'd say that in general, when viewed in person, most LED lit tanks don't look as visually bright as MH or T5 lit tanks. This was true of my Solaris fixture and is also true for my current Chinese LED fixture as well. But the PAR values tell a different story.
Color aesthetics are, as always, in the eye of the beholder. If you have a DIY build, you may want to experiment with replacing 1 or 2 of the white LEDS with red or warm white LEDs to balance out the color spectrum?
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07/31/2010, 01:39 PM | #9 | ||
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To this point the discussion I've seen on adding warm whites or red have all been about putting missing spectra back into the tank to benefit coral growth. I've not seen discussion around this making white LEDs just look better. But it's definitely worth a shot. I tapped my heat sink with threaded holes specifically so swapping LEDs would not be too painful. So I may try that. Thanks.
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07/31/2010, 01:47 PM | #10 | |
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You've had CWs and RBs over a tank that previously had a 20K MH over it, and you see little color difference. What type of MH bulb was it? And ballast? Maybe that's the issue. Lot's of people worship the color of Radiums, and I've got to say I'm happy with mine. And while I may need to tweak LED color balance, and may need less tight optics, or to swap in a few warm whites or reds, I can definitely say my current setup of Cree CW's and RB's is not getting it when compared to my Radium augmented with actinics.
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07/31/2010, 03:10 PM | #11 |
skimmer freak
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well i have used pc, mh, t5's and led, had the maxspec 170w version and liked it but just didnt give the coverage for my tank i needed and to the eye seemed no where near as bright as the tek 8 bulb t5 i had on it. needless to say after 3 weeks got rid of the led and put the tek back on, i switched to led to cut long term cost, ended up getting a ati 6 bulb and dropped 78 watts by losing 2 bulbs, imo i dont think any light, mh or led gives off the over all color or lighting completely of a tank like t5 does,
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07/31/2010, 04:15 PM | #12 |
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I've tried a xp-e red and didn't notice any difference in overall apperance IMO. Next will be a UV led.
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07/31/2010, 04:17 PM | #13 | |
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The problem you are running into is the sh_tty spectrum produced by cool white LEDs, which are are heavy on blue and green spectra, but weak on anything else. They are designed to be bright, but not have good color. The excessive green of cool-white LEDs cancel out pinks, purples, red and other colors and then relies on actinic to pop colors. This is why we don't use daylight CFLs over our tanks, of which cool-white LEDs are similiar. Talk about a double standard. There is no scientific reason to use cool-white LEDs on your reef tank. Somebody started doing this in their basement and everybody copies and defends this. The growth energy in LEDs is in the far blue anyways. you have no idea how many reefers I run into that are complaining about this and went back to halides. What I advise everybody who's going DIY LED is try different LED combos first on a small heat sink, and verify your favorite colors. My favorite combination is two royal blues combined with a single 4100-3500k neutral. This produces color more similiar to deep K halides and gets rid of the sterile white LED look. I proved it - I brought a couple of my LED lights to the local reef shop that runs XMs, Radiums, and Reeflux and we all compared. Everybody loved the LEDs with my warmer mix and hated the LED light with cool-whites and RBs. The warmer mix also looked close enough to the halides to be competitive. 1:1 RB/cool-white works good for a parking garage. Replacing some of your cool-whites with neutrals will fix the problem to an extent. The problem is if you have a 1:1 mix on your tank your spacing will be off. Seriously, just replace a couple cool-whites with neutrals and put a piece of cardboard over the rest of the light to compare. |
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08/01/2010, 05:13 AM | #14 | |
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08/01/2010, 05:33 AM | #15 | |
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Honestly, I feel the same way about the white issues. When I used P38's, I got the crazy colors and got used to it- I still had thought it was too blue in many circumstances. It looks right on certain tanks. I just got the 12k Photon Cannon and there is zero blue light and this great amount of white light makes everything look like A$$. I guess that means that I really have drab corals and I need to find vibrant colored corals that look good in 12k. It does show off the true colors of my fish though, but I do miss the fluorescent abilities of the blue light.
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08/01/2010, 07:40 AM | #16 | |
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This is WAY too important a subject to be only covered as OT discussions buried in threads of different sub-topics. IMO it deserves it's own thread. So, my request is... If you've got an experience with this question - please, by all means post. This is the place. And if you've got a link to another location where this has been posted, please post a link. And for goodness sakes, if your prior discussion was in one of the many LED threads that have become so long as to effectively useless, please provide a post number along with the link. Thanks.
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- Steve Longing for "fact based" reef keeping - with hearsay, non sequiturs, dogma and other types of bad “information” removed from our discussions. Last edited by scolley; 08/01/2010 at 07:46 AM. |
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08/01/2010, 08:04 AM | #17 |
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Also... to anyone that thinks they do have an LED that compares favorably to more traditional lighting, please post pictures. What kind of pictures?
If such pics exist, I'd love to see them. 'Cuz personally, I'm still looking for proof that the emperor has clothes. And pictures (as I've described above) are about as close as we can get to proof.
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08/01/2010, 08:41 AM | #18 |
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Thanks for starting this thread. I was about to order two PAR 38's for my 40B and would have been pretty sad to have found this info on color after spending my $$$'s.
I've never seen a tank lit by LED's so I can only go by the MB posts. From what you read everyday you'd certainly think that LED's are THE way to go. Seems everyone is building or buying them and you never hear anyone saying anything negative. |
08/01/2010, 08:47 AM | #19 |
skimmer freak
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lights
ok let me see if i can do this right, this will show a 36" tek 8 bulb t5 and the maxspect 170w. i will say this when all leds are on the maxspec had really nice temp of around 18k with just the blues on it made everything look fake first pic is with all leds on second pic is of t5's
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08/01/2010, 09:19 AM | #20 | |
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08/01/2010, 03:33 PM | #21 |
crabby hermit
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This is a very difficult topic to discuss in an online forum because people like different colors in their tanks. This is somewhat easy to compensate for with MH by using different bulbs (and to some extent different ballasts) and very easy to compensate for with T5s by varying the bulb mix. This is usually somewhat difficult to adjust for with LEDs since a lot depends on the batch/bin of the LEDs that you/they use to build it. Sure, you can adjust the blue/white mix with dimming but this won't replace the frequencies that are missing in the lights to start off with. This could be mitigated if the LED manufacturers came up with a simple way to plug and play different LEDs into their mounts/connectors allowing people to customize the color to their preference, much like T5s.
The other problem with this discussion is the usage of pictures. As we all know, taking pictures and using them as a basis for comparison between different tanks/people is problematic because so much depends on the photographer's ability to render color accurately (set white balance properly) and also because LED tanks are notoriously difficult to photograph properly (the end photos tend not to look anything like how the tank looks like in person). Regardless, I agree with scolley that this is a worthy topic of discussion and I'm very interested in what comes out of it though I've pointed out a few issues with methodology. While all of my tanks are currently LED lit, my primary motivation for this was electrical savings (hard to ignore when your electrical bill runs around $400 - 600 a month) with color rendition and growth a second and third. I'm certainly not wed to the technology since I originally dumped my Solaris and went to an ATI Powermodul a few iterations back.
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08/01/2010, 04:56 PM | #22 |
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About 20 years ago, we had 5500k Halides that produced this thin white light much like todays' 10k LED's. All your corals were kinda pale, dull, and boring. You could get really excited if some of those powder blue mushrooms from JP Burleson found their way into your tank. Green star polyps and Trachyphyllia were the "wow' colored corals that looked brighter than the rest. When VHO actinic came around, it was like a black light went off in your bedroom.
The reality of this whole topic is that corals in the wild are nowhere near as colorful as they seem to be in our tanks. Be thankful that now you have a powerful light that costs pennies to use and delivers very little heat. Start buying and growing corals that look good under white light. Urine looks kinda boring in the toilet, but when you turn on the black light, it glows pretty nice.
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08/01/2010, 05:13 PM | #23 | |||||
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99% of DIY reef builds are RB + cool-white Crees, with no discussion towards other brands of LEDs or colors. I can hit the same PAR values and improve color with a build that costs no more than half what it costs with current Cree centric designs, and you don't see me making official write-ups. Quote:
A couple guys dictate these LED tutorials, and they're all the same. "Use cool-white and RB Crees because they're the standard". The result is crap color, and there is no open thought on this because those of you who've dropped several hundred dollars on cool-white based lights won't admit it. However, a year or two down the road I'm betting you'll quietly dump your lights and replace them with SMD based strips using better color combos, cheaper, and likely not running Cree. Quote:
I don't care what emitters you use, but I encourage people to at least try different color ratios small scale before commiting. You have a problem with that? Also, please don't tell me what to post or how to think, got it? If we were discussing this in an engineering board room you'd likely be excused because I'm objectively open to other solutions. Quote:
However, with DIY LED threads you are only allowed the option of Cree, RB, and cool-white, and how dare you use something other than Cree or cool-whites? Doesn't this seem a bit odd? Why is it nobody pushes you to use cool-white CFLs over your tank, but cool-white Crees are 'the standard' when the spectrum is similiar? Quote:
The current DIY design of spreading 3watt LEDs evenly around a big chunk of aluminum is already obsolete. Again, this works fine for a nano tank, but is inefficient and expensive on larger tanks. Don't take my word for it - just look at the direction recent commercial lights are going. Another controversial topic is that PAR meters are typically not skewed properly for reef requirements and put too much weight on longer spectrums because they are primarily designed for terrestrial fruiting plants. The result is that cool-white LEDs yield a false high meter reading with PAR meters, even to the point where I've seen white only LEDs deliver higher meter readings than twice the wattage of RBs. This is absurd and why I don't trust PAR meters except for same spectrum reference tests. Far blue is the action spectrum for corals, and if you think the high levels of green and yellow-green light in a cool-white LED contribute to photosynthesis somebody needs to go back to science class. What this means is your tank looks darker than your halides as I believe you complained about. The main reason for this is because cool-white LEDs are given more PAR weighting than they should. As long as you have sufficient RB, and this includes the blue that's in cool-whites to be fair, everything else is optional. The good thing is that LEDs are hyper efficient at producing 450-470nm light. Originally I was using 450lumen Bridgelux cool-whites without RB, and getting decent PAR. It was simply because there was enough far blue buried in those high powered emitters to keep things growing. Color sucked though, but at the time I was on the band wagon. Again, the color problem is greatly helped by simply trying different color combos, such as warmer LEDs closely flanked with two or even three RBs. It will get you in the ballpark of 20k or 14k halides and actually drive actinic colors harder. This fixes color disco problems as well. Also, once you stop using cool-white LEDs Cree doesn't have such an efficiency lead and there's more LED options. |
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08/01/2010, 05:18 PM | #24 |
skimmer freak
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i do agree on the part about where it is hard to get a proper picture dictating the color, the photo's i posted make the led seem as bright or brighter then my t5's were. this is definately not the case as it was in person. also the pic with the t5's seem a little washed out as it isnt in person
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08/01/2010, 06:16 PM | #25 | |
Sialkot
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