xD
I know man! That's why I'm looking seriously into the Philips Retro White CMH. It looks like it has a better spectrum than the chameleon, and it's cheaper than most of the HPS's on the market now. The one I want is like $50 as compared to the one I
wanted, the Eye Horti Super 400, that's $100.
Take a look at these graphs. Here are the light spectrum for a standard Metal Halide, Horti Super HPS, Philips CMH, Chameleon Plasma and natural sunlight.
Metal Halide
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Eye Horti Super 400 HPS
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Phillips Ceramic Metal Halide
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Chameleon Plasma
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Natural Sunlight
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The thing that got me off in the direction of new light bulbs, was the fact that on a sunny day in summer, the sun only shines 7000-8000 lumen. I started to wonder why I was shoving lumen up my plants ass, and why it's such common practice to do so. I remember reading that plants don't see light in terms of lumens but in PAR watts, but that's the boring sciency part of J.Cervantes's grow bible right? So I glossed over it.
It wasn't until I started looking into light bulbs again that I realized the significance of that information. This is a quote I took of the chameleon webstie, but it applies to indoor growing in general;
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Plants "see" light differently than human beings do. While they are a good general standard to measure light efficiency, lumens, lux, or footcandles, should not be taken as gospel for plant growth since they are measures used for human visibility. A more correct measure for plants is PAR[/FONT] [FONT=Tahoma, Arial]Photosythetically Active Radiation (PAR) : used to refer to the portion of the light spectrum optimal for plant growth, namely about 400 to 700 nanometers in wavelength. [/FONT] [FONT=Tahoma, Arial]watts. In addition to quantity of light, considerations of quality are important, since plants use energy in different parts of the spectrum for critical processes. For a detailed discussion of how to determine light efficiency for plants see: [/FONT]
When you look into it, it's not that bulb companies are purposely trying to mislead us. It's that HID lighting was originally intended for warehouse lighting, and for engineers and contractors, lumens are how they measure how much lighting a certain space will need. IE
visible light for the purpose of working safely in, NOT for plants to grow in.
It's all fascinating really, and if you get in deep enough, it might change the way you think about lighting in general. I know it looking like that for me.
For example, now growers are thinking the the only reason that 1000 watt lights yeild more than 400 watters is because of the shear amount heat and uv light it radiates. Tests are being conducted now where growers are setting up uv lights to turn on a half hour before the main lights in the grow room turn on, and stay on a half hour after they turn off to better mimic the sun and test the theories. Results should be out by the end of this year.
Beanz