Question with hid lighting

I decided to set up my 600w HID light for vegging today, my cfl's just seemed to be growing slowly. But whenever i turned the HID on and let it sit for about an hour, i went to check on it and its not very bright. Does not seem as bright as the cfl's that i was using. Im able to look up at the buld for a little bit without hurting my eyes while its on. The bulb is brand new, i think it came from a company called ipower. For a 600 watter i expected it to be atleast a little brighter than my cfl's. I know their is a plus side when using hps over cfl, but what about hid? Or am I just wasting electricity?

what kind of hid?

Its an mh bulb sorry about that but it came with my ulti luminx kit

can you post a picture? should have a brilliant white light.

This was taken with my tablets camera

Its giving off a blue tint but its just not bright

is your ballast dim-able? might have it turned down.

Ballest is dimmable, i checked it after i posted those pics because i was gonna feel retarded it that was the problem, but it was set at 100% is their an increase in growth or anything using an mh bulb over cfl

You shouldn't be able to look directly at a 600w bulb without immediate temporary blindness. You have a defective bulb or ballast.

HID lighting is a acronym for High Intensity Discharge. HPS and MH along with plasma fall into the category of HID lighting. Your 600 watt bulb should be SO bright that it will blind you if you stare at it for even one second. Something is wrong. Is it a switchable ballast? are you sure its a 600 watt ballast? If its switchable make sure its turned on the Metal Halide setting. also make sure that if you're running the power on 120 that it is plugged into a 120 V plug. If its 240 make sure its in 240 plug. If you check everything and its still not working take that shit back to where you bought it. because that light ought to be so bright you could see it from tha fuckkin moon

Yea all iPower ballasts are digital and dimmable. I have the exact same one as you, did you buy it on Amazon? lol I did. May sound stupid but make sure they didnt give you a 1000w bulb... I bought an apollo setup off amazon and they sent me a 1000w MH instead, the 600w MH bulbs fom iPower are fairly large so it might be easy to mistake. They have super good rerturn policy at ipower(incase its your ballast). they will just send you a new ballast even if you send em a working one i imagine.