how bright is a "real" lightsaber?

[dbraxton9]

with all the talk about lumens and LED brightness etc., it occurs to me that the since the movie sabers are special visual effects, we have no idea how bright a real one is. in ROTJ, luke's saber is plenty bright and colorful in the tatooine sunlight, but making ANY lightsource that could do that is nearly impossible (and unsafe to be sure). in ESB which shows lightsabers in near darkness, they do not even illuminate the actors' faces. so my question is "how bright is bright enough?" i usee my EL sabers for fanfilms so i only need it to show up on camera, but i wonder what others think.
DB

[xwingband]

If you really want the look of the movies you need to rotoscope like they do. I think EL shows up badly in comparison and LEDs are closer but still seem like a lighted stick on film.

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[dbraxton9]

the original effect in EpIV was a lighting trick in the beginning. they used a product called Scotchlite from the 3M company that is basically like the paint used on reflective street signs and road lines. it did not work well enough so they scrapped it and went with the rotoscoping. but the scenes with lightsabers BEFORE the duel with vader, they used the reflective paint (which has microscopig glass beads to catch the light). that's where the distinctive shimmer comes from, it's a tiangular blade with a motor in the hilt that spins it. looked cool to me, but can't work in a duel.
DB

[xwingband]

I knew that.[] It doesn't even answer your own question so it is quite irrelavent.

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[dbraxton9]

excuse me, but are you the moderator of this forum? while you definitely provide some useful technical advice, you have a really snotty way of replying to people's posts.
you bitched about me posting a question both as a reply and as a new thread even though it really DID pertain to two separate topics, mentioning something about "you will get banned for multiple posts like that. It costs money to host a forum and It costs more with more posts".
are you paying for this forum? if so I will happily quit wasting your time, space and money by not posting to this site anymore. I will also gladly caution any others to likewise cease. there are several pages of utterly pointless "nerd vs geek" discussions on this forum that also cost money. are you going broke because of it? are your crabby comebacks any less expensive?

you miss the point of this thread entirely with your response. Once more i will state it simply: the original prop DID glow with reflected light that CAN be measured and compared to the lighting around it (in fact it was because that is what light meters are for in filmmaking, but i bet you knew that too, huh?). therefore one can ask "when is it bright enough" with a real world frame of reference instead of comparing to rotoscope.
did you get it that time? is it "relevant" enough?
DB

[Protein5000]

Lay it down Brax.......

Some people are too obsessed with forum etiquette.

If you pounce on everyone for making a mistake on the forums, people will be less likely to post because they will think someone will jump down their throat for not spelling "Light Saber" properly, or that people wont be considerate enough to try and understand what a foreigner is trying to say in their broken English. This means less posts, less information sharing, fewer ideas = less opportunity for development.

Relax....It's just a forum.

[xwingband]

Jeez, I didn't mean to seem like I was jumping down your throat. Honestly I didn't appreciate the history lesson, but I didn't get angry. It seemed like "teach the ignorant one a lesson on star wars".

You also took what I said out of context. I said I've been at OTHER places where multiple posts get you banned, and by cost I meant Tim is paying to host this forum in some way. I'm pretty sure Tim doesn't care but in the interest of sharing information yes, "forum etiquette" helps. I also have no problems with the "pointless nerd v. geek" discussions because they are in the misc forum. If those topics popped up in say the LED blade forum I'd be "Why is this here?" just the same.

Since Lucas eventually gave up the skotchlite I think it's silly to pursue it to measure the brightness since you wouldn't be using skotchlite anyway. If you were given a light meter's measurement would you measure it against the EL? I think in practicality this would be a fruitless effort since it's a directional light (studio lighting) being reflected versus ambient light (EL). As a reflection wouldn't the brightness be slightly less than the source light anyway?

Just because I didn't give you a number doesn't mean I didn't address the question or "missed" the point. EL isn't bright enough but LED's are. EL looks like a glowstick on film. If a measurement is all you wanted you could have just asked if anyone had a lightmeter and a skotchlite blade. You asked for other's thoughts and I gave mine. I can't help it if I didn't give the response you were looking for.

Protein5000, If you think I've done any of that tell me. I have told people to mind their spelling because we have a spell check now and there's no excuse not to take the time to spell correctly. Also I did that one time ask someone who was a foriegner to restate what they wanted because I was confused but it's not like I said "WTF, what languauge do you speak?"

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[WeirdoTransvestite]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Protein5000

Lay it down Brax.......

Some people are too obsessed with forum etiquette.

If you pounce on everyone for making a mistake on the forums, people will be less likely to post because they will think someone will jump down their throat for not spelling "Light Saber" properly, or that people wont be considerate enough to try and understand what a foreigner is trying to say in their broken English. This means less posts, less information sharing, fewer ideas = less opportunity for development.

Relax....It's just a forum.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">


The Internet: Serious Business

Those who see the light at the end of the tunnel, need to stop staring at the sun.

[scaarmor]

I think everyone here can agree with me that they, myself included, have at one time or another misread the meaning of a post, e-mail,etc. With no way to convay emotion or tone of voice they can be easily misunderstood...I have before (in e-mails, not here) tried to ask a friendly question that was inturpreted incorrectly and lost a friend over it. Everytime I read an e-mail, post, etc. I read it several times using different tones of voice and all that good stuff to make sure the guy who just put me down, and should be hunted and shot in the street, didnt possibly mean it in another much nicer context. When you have no emotion or facial expressions to go by you have to naturally give some space for errors in inturpretation. I am sure that I will someday leave a post here that will be read wrong and take some flack for, but when that happens I know everyone will be able to be adult enough to hear me out and get back to why we are here in the first place.

I am not trying to further the argument, just thought everyone should remember that errors happen, and always will. We have to just expect it and be able to appoligize and move on.

Cain

***It is now that we battle.When you die, await my arrival in the afterlife where we will battle again.Perhaps there you may have the ability to defeat me,but not here,not now,not this day.So let us part with words and embrace the blade.***

[Strydur]

I am not going to comment much on this discussion. I dont moderate the forums much and will leave it for you to work out among yourselves as long as it doesnt get violent in here. I will say though that at this time I dont have any bandwidth issues. As far as I can tell my current status is.

Bandwidth: 9114.03 MB of 250000.00 MB

and rolls over on the 4th I believe. So it looks like we are far from having bandwidth issues.

Tim
The Custom Saber Shop