Has anyone ever tried... (experimental)

Okay, so, never successfully grew, new member to the site, just now starting out, but I wondered something...

What if you could use WAY less powerful lights by having something between them somewhat like a magnifying glass, but huge with a wide-angle so it doesn't concentrate the light so much that it burns the plants?

Has anyone ever tried something like that?

What if you can get a 100w light of the proper type, magnify it, and end up with a 600w, 500w free of charge? Or does light not really work that way and it would only magnify unwanted aspects?

What if you can take a little dinky 13 or 18 watt CFL and magnify it to being like having 10 of them?! Impossible? DID I JUST CHANGE CULTIVATION FOREVER? Probably not. But no such thing as stupid questions, right?

isn't the reason that magnifying glasses intensify light is because it concentrates it in a single spot?

you can't create energy out of nowhere, just like energy has to go somewhere it can't just disappear.. if you did do what you're thinking it could theoretically work, but all you'd be doing is making the light slightly stronger and your coverage area will be minimised

i dunno... lol but that answer is a buzzkill

haha yea it is warren lol.

Ok, but what about a sort of fiber optics-like construction that takes one light and routes it to 4 or 8 directions all at once, from one light, a light strong enough to grow all your plants, but only hitting the canopy, re-route the light through enclosed reflectors/mirrors or optics - then you use the same amount of lights, but have it all shining all around the plants. I think fiber optics lose zero potency on the light that passes through them compared to how light on its own gets weak exponentially or at least very quickly, but I'm not entirely sure.

Think of those little single-piece clear plastic parts that stick through plastic casing and makes every light on an electronic work. Those are like fake fiber optics but are fed from multiple light sources.

I had some other ideas, I'll try to remember them

Anyone else have any never-been-done ideas that could change the world of buds?

Yeah gene splicing it w a tree so we have cannabis indica trees. Cops would never figure it out. Huge yields. Jk but the light bouncing off water would have the same effect. It wouldn't work well I'm sure you'd prob implode chlorophyll and burn leaves. But it's a valid idea. What someone should do is mail order clones from tissue culture, so we don't need seeds.

isnt this tech u speak of used by led designers n companys? they shine leds through a special lens anyways u may wanna have a look

i have 17 in deep 18 in tall 36 wide mirrors for reflex cfl 84 watt 56000 lumens enough light for veg. grow and how many

i grew a 4-5ft sativa under a 45w cfl, you need alot of light reflection to go on to the plant and it takes longer to grow with lower watts in my experience

no buzzkill meant at all, that's just my two cents

i have no idea if it would work, but that was just me speculating

In theory I think it's plausible but ​I think you would need some seriously elaborate set up! My 2 cents

surround the whole plant with cfls 2 inches away

I am a designer of new LED lamps. The only thing a magnifying component may do is focus the beam. That would be so fucking cool to do with an HPS 1000W. Fuck illuminating the room, I want a 20 degree beam on just the plants, no reflectors.

theoretically this could be possible (although i doubt it would be as simple as mere magnification). to concentrate the light so that none of it goes "unused" is like using more watts. basically such an increase in efficiancy that production is also increased.

however, i think if this was a simple thing to do we'd all be doing it already. it sounds really hard and sciency and all our nerds are busy with tissue culture lol.

I've got it. You know the light over the dentist's chair? Now, I am not sure if his light in it is grow worthy, maybe some are, but it has a crazy look to it like it has a bubble over it and is pretty bright.

Not the one's with the inverted 1/8 discoball, I mean the ones with the magnifiers over them, it's probably not even a magnifier but more of a focus lens.

A focus lens, that preferably would also intensify the light and make it like having x amount more than you actually do. Even just being 1 free light, it's worth itself in gold from what I have been reading while doing my own researches on how to grow.

focus the light, like the dentist chair does instead of like a spotlight, but reverse of the dentist who focuses it smaller, you focus it wide with magnification- flip the lense and be a larger one. Someone could make it with resin (not that kind lol!), where it distributes the light very deliberately, have more control.

I can see that growers have wanted to do that with reflections and different light cycles. If there could be a focus lens that also have some slight bit of magnification at least, you could have an after-burner light direction scheme that interacts directly with the light and if it worked could potentially instantly double your light without touching your electric bill.

Ir might be a small deal to people perhaps running a lot of lights comfortably, but the "very, very little guy" would be instantly helped out big time with no extra cost other than the lens or added risk in his small operation, and the guys with even more lights than most would see hugeeee savings in electric (or savings in usage = money BACK to get from selling it to the grid if you're solar, etc ).

So much potential provided it not only focused the light but also magnified it in some way that made it like you had more lights than you really do.

Focusing light is a way to redirect light. However many watts your bulb uses, all that available energy is usually at 360 degrees, so people use hoods to redirect wasted light. They could use some kind of focus to take all the light and put it in a single spotlight on one plant, but most people tend to have more than one plant anyway. If the lamp is right next to some leaves, it doesn't matter if you have 20 degrees or 120 degrees of a beam either. You need to have as much surface area of a plant illuminated with as much light as you can.. Those 20 degree beams are good for pretty much just one plant. Typically they're 25 degrees but most of the brightness is confined to a narrower 20 degrees.

I understand what you're trying to accomplish with a magnifying glass, but all that really does is reduce the size of the lamp, in terms of light density. The size of the lamp is already spent/consumed, and you can only get so many in for various reasons.. Like trying to use a bunch of incandescent 100W bulbs and focusing each with a glass.. You're still going to have a lot of wasted energy because of the bulb itself, and you can't get any more lumens out of the equation unless you use a better bulb. Thats the bottom line. So yes you can but its fruitless unless you have a room for generating all that light and you can channel it in using reflectors and lenses.. The only real usefulness for that would be if you needed A LOT of light (millions of lumens) and you are forced to use the room to keep the heat from getting to where you use the light.

thanks growin good

ud have to have a pretty big magnifying glass

Brian. said:

Okay, so, never successfully grew, new member to the site, just now starting out, but I wondered something...

What if you could use WAY less powerful lights by having something between them somewhat like a magnifying glass, but huge with a wide-angle so it doesn't concentrate the light so much that it burns the plants?

Has anyone ever tried something like that?

Click to expand...

Yes; its been tried.
Pretty much EVER grower uses reflectors to concentrate or spread out the light thrown from their bulbs.
Doing it with lenses can accomplish more or less the same thing, only lenses are more expensive and the glass absorbs some of the light, lowering the overall efficiency of the lights.

Note that all lenses do is CONCENTRATE the SPREAD of the light. They do NOT increase the AMOUNT of light, and therefore CANNOT increase your overall yield.

What if you can get a 100w light of the proper type, magnify it, and end up with a 600w, 500w free of charge? Or does light not really work that way and it would only magnify unwanted aspects?

Click to expand...

It doesn't work that way.

Think about it. If you could turn a 100W light bulb into a 500W bulb just with a lens, then why would anyone ever use 500W bulbs?

Again, the only thing a lens can do is adjust the SPREAD of the light, either spread the same amount of light over a broader area (making each lit area dimmer), or concentrating it over a narrower area (making a very small area brighter). You can't spread the same amount of light over a broader area AND make it brighter!

More specifically, no matter WHAT you do, you're not going to be able to spread the light from a single 23 watt light bulb over an entire room to create the brightness of the sun over the whole room so you can grow a room full of plants from one bulb!

What if you can take a little dinky 13 or 18 watt CFL and magnify it to being like having 10 of them?! Impossible? DID I JUST CHANGE CULTIVATION FOREVER? Probably not. But no such thing as stupid questions, right?

Click to expand...

Again, sorry, but what you are describing is physically impossible.

No. . .you didn't just change growing forever.

No. . .there are no such thing as "stupid" questions. . .only stupid people! (And no, I'm not saying you're one of them!).

Total Head said:

theoretically this could be possible (although i doubt it would be as simple as mere magnification). to concentrate the light so that none of it goes "unused" is like using more watts. basically such an increase in efficiancy that production is also increased.

however, i think if this was a simple thing to do we'd all be doing it already. it sounds really hard and sciency and all our nerds are busy with tissue culture lol.

Click to expand...

It is being done already, and no, its not hard or complicated at all.

Again, people use simple reflectors to try and ensure that as much light as possible goes from the bulbs to the plants.

The PRACTICAL way to make sure that all the light gets used is to make sure that everywhere there is light, there is also plant to absorb the light!

So that's why people grow with "sea of green" and "screen of green" techniques . . .to ensure that ALL emitted light falls evenly on a sheetlike green plant canopy, creating maximum light efficiency. Extreme examples of this type of growing include "stadium" type grows, and even rotating wheels, again, just to make sure that ALL light from the bulbs hit green plant so none is wasted.