Realistic expectations for blade brightness

[BhujangiJedi]

As a newcomer to DIY light sabers, I was amazed looking at all the super bright glowy sabers in the hundreds of pictures in the gallery. I've had my two Master Replicas Anakin sabers for about a year and a half, and I thought they were bright enough - then I saw all these amazing pictures! WOW! It's just like the movies!

WRONG

It's bad photography (or good, depending on how you wanted the picture to turn out ;)). To be sure, a good Luxeon and a good blade will be brighter than an MR saber, but many of the pictures are an exaggeration of the reality. I'm just hoping to decrease the surprise many people might feel when they build their first Lux III saber and power it up. The really bright sabers are made by using the absolute best power source, driver, LED, and blade. Figuring all that out takes a bit of research or sound advice from the forums (...and while there are some smart folks here, don't take all the advice you get as gospel).

I had the misfortune of building my first saber using the color generally perceived by people as being the least bright - amber. I also have a camera that does a very nice job of handling white balance and exposure automatically, so on the automatic setting it photographs light sabers very similar to the way they appear in reality. When I compared what I saw looking at my sabers, and my pictures with the pics in the galleries, I thought there must be something seriously wrong with my sabers. While they certainly needed some improvement, they're never going to look like many of the gallery pictures. With a little tweaking, I can get my camera to take unreal pictures, similar to many of the pictures in the galleries (it figures everyone dumps all their money into light sabers and buys cheap cameras! :-P).

No flash, realistic on the left, over-exposed on the right:
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=56&d=1202353518 http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=57&d=1202353525


With flash, realistic on the left, over-exposed on the right:
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=58&d=1202353531 http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=59&d=1202353536

[Darth_DevilGuy]

yeah nothing is going to look like the movies, honestly, there are plenty of non over exposed pics so I don't know what you were expecting. that said, in the dark even an MR looks pretty damn impressive, and thats where I tend to display my MR's, in the dark. when I get a duelable blade I'll probably duel in the dark too.

[Count Malik]

You could make it look close... mabe from a distance.

[Novastar]

This is a good topic for a thread, and has been addressed in a number of ways.

It is most CERTAIN that photos that are concerning "let's compare objects that are lit" concepts... are simply not going to be very conducive to "fair" comparisons for a great number of reasons, one of which is simply exposure. Others are: ambient light, camera "color bias", camera lens/optic technology, what wavelengths are "shown" and which simply don't appear on the photo, camera steadiness, camera distance from saber(s), is the saber on the floor, is the floor reflective, is it upright, against the wall, etc. etc. etc. Blah-dee-blah-dee-blah.

Another thing to consider is that no two saber blades are made "the same". Since most any "luxeon" blade you'll find is not yet "factory machined"... you will get variance of all kinds. This mirror is off somewhat. This one is too small. This one is too big. This diffuser film is "good". This one is "bad". This blade is long, this one is short, this one is thin-walled, this one is thick, this one is "sand blasted", this one is not... and THIS one sucks monkey flunk. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Then... you have the OPTICS. Oh dear, did we forget that? This is 5 deg. This is 10. These optics are not 100% "seated properly" over the LED. Bugger that. This one is a reflector. This one is a collimator lens. This one has an opaque frame... this one has a clear one. Blah-dee-blah-dee-blah.

Oops... don't forget LED color... OOPS. *AND* binning code. *AND* forward voltage variance. *AND* current currently being run. Current that is "captured" by the shot & frame taken.

YES.
IT
SUCKS
SWEATY
MONKEY
BALLS
to compare photos. :confused:

And sadly... that would *JUST* take into consideration photos taken by the SAME camera. Same sabers. So what do we do? So go and get 100 people, have them take a bunch of shots of their sabers, and "compare" them. That's a great "control" group. Not.

What I have done for the Hyperdyne vs. Luxeon video demo (which btw, still has its "bias" issues, including the garbage resolution on youtube + compression)--is about the BEST I think I could do. Without going ridiculously anal about every single detail that I could not control regarding comparisons:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k5Ws91SGpDA

And btw, the high-resolution video I took of this that is on my computer (which we ALL know gets compressed and squashed when it goes into YouTuber cyberspace)... demonstrates essentially the same story the low-quality video tells.

So... everyone who wants to see "how bright" you can REALLY make a saber... well, these are good examples. "The Best"? I don't know about that. But, I would go so far as to say that certain SPECIFICALLY and WELL-MADE Luxeons and the Hyperblades are among the brightest "toys" out there.

Now. COULD you--at this present moment in time--make far brighter sabers than these? Of course you could.

But... could you do so with:

- the same/similar battery, voltage, current solution...?
- the same/similar parts cost...?
- the same/similar labor involved...?
- the same/similar weight, length, width concerns...?
- the same/similar safety & heat solution...?

?????

I highly, highly doubt it. ;)

[BhujangiJedi]

Nova, I'm glad you post here so much since you have a lot of experience with a lot of sabers and different electronics/optics/blades. I've read a lot of very helpful info-packed posts from you. Even still... I was a bit surprised when I put my sabers together. I realized that a lot of the photos I saw couldn't be exact representations of reality, but I figured they were somewhere in the neighborhood. The only blades I have much personal experience with are my own - two MR Anakins and two amber Lux III's.

A lot of the posts I've read here go back 2 years or so, so I kind of figured that the technology was in a pretty optimal state by now, and after reading the forums til my eyes bled, I thought I was ready to order some parts and put together my own room-illuminating solar flare light sabers, like in all the pictures people were posting of their Luxeon sabers. Sadly, I still had yet to realize various important factors (resistor chart doesn't provide max current, lumens don't mean diddly for comparing different colors, TCSS battle blade straight from the store needs help to really look good), but the biggest was the fact that a lot of the pictures give the impression of a much brighter blade than reality... not even really in the neighborhood anymore.

For visual impact, it can be cool to have unrealistically bright saber pictures, but I just hope that newcomers realize how far from reality some of the pictures are.

[Novastar]

Well, all I can say is... this video shows you pretty clearly what my saber looks like "in person":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2iaDEhfd4yo

Now it's true that as you increase ambient light (including anything from an indoor 60-watt bulb or whatever to... well... out in SUNLIGHT)--you're going to start running into issues on determining some kind of "standard" brightness.

But that makes sense. Light carries both properties of waves AND particles. It's rather a wacky thing in my opinion, but... it really doesn't make sense to "challenge the sun" with a Luxeon III (or any other single LED for that matter!). Even an array of LEDs can't challenge sunlight, or... being under high-powered street lamps.

Think about it like this. Did you ever notice how street traffic go/stop lamps have those black circular shrouds over the lamps (which, btw are SOMEtimes not lamps but clusters/arrays of LEDs)? They protrude several inches forward of the array/lamp. Why? Simple. So you can view the light... at ANY time of the day or night.

Now obviously, they are unneeded during the night, but imagine if they were not there during the day. You would NEVER be able to make a distinction between one color to the next. And THOSE are HIGH-WATTAGE, HIGH-OUTPUT, HIGH-POWERED, large clusters of LEDs (or a big ol' lamp).

So... to expect any current day saber to require everyone to wear sunglasses is really rather ridiculous--especially on batteries (as I mentioned laboriously in the above post).

The reality is... REALITY is a harsh thing for movie-goers who are used to every special effect in the book. Heck... why do you think I put together the BOP projects? I wanted to see what *I* thought could be capable of "relatively average" joes/janes with decent fitness and martial skill 100% live, in real time. I already know what greenscreens, graphics, computers, uber-costumes, uber-lighting, uber-cut scenes and uber-safety walls/pads can do... ... ... ANYTHING! :)

Anyhow. Yes. For those reading: REALITY CHECK. These are toys--which behave under the properties of light, sound, reality and physics on Earth... under the technology to which the general consumer currently has access... :)

[B5813]

I saw your video of the green Flange III, Nova... that's exactly what my green K2 saber blade looks like. The problem I have with posting accurate pictures is that the color ends up with a lot of white mixed in with the color which gives it an extra glow/brightness. I've only put together two sabers using K2's (green and royal blue) and I say for me the green is extremely bright especially with a slightly modified blade shaft.

[Novastar]

Exactly. The extra "white" is often just a sign of either (or both) over-exposure... or flash flare.

This is normal (especially in photos), and is yet ANOTHER consideration that puts even MORE variance from photo to photo that I forgot to mention.

So...

Yeah... uh... like BH8 said. Flash! Flash photography alters the look of sabers too. D'oh. If no one is getting the clue... comparing saber photos is can (in many cases) be very much like comparing a Buick and a Tank. They both roll... they both are vehicles... but... well... anyhow. ;)

[Hasid Lafre]

Well nova that conparasin may be tru for most buicks. My friend has a 77 buick lesaber custom and that thing was a tank.