HUE LED light as safelight

hao922 · Nov 29, 2014

Just wondering if these colour changing LED light, such as HUE LED light <http://www2.meethue.com/> , could be used as the darkroom safelight as I know the light can be adjusted to all sorts of colour. Has anyone had any experience with that?
Thanks in advance.

Mainecoonmaniac · Nov 29, 2014

I'm using strands of red and orange led Xmas lights off ebay and they work well. I stopped using my Thomas Duplex safelight because it hums.

hao922 · Nov 29, 2014

Thanks for the reply.

The only reason why I ask is I want to use the light as normal light most of time and switch to a safe light when needed so that I don't need to install a separate light bulb.

bdial · Nov 30, 2014

I bought a RGB LED rope light as an experiment for a single light that could do all. It works fine as a safelight with just the red LEDs on, but I don't like the "white" light it produces. Consequently, I only use it in red and still rely on a conventional bulb for the white space lighting. What I used is similar to the product shown here; http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,43629,70322&p=70326

But, YMMV with the HUE lights, I've seen them in the home center stores, but haven't paid much attention to them.
The major problem would likely be how "pure" the red light it produces is, and secondarily the brightness.
Make sure you do a proper test for the "safeness" if you decide to try it out.

RalphLambrecht · Nov 30, 2014

bdial said:
I bought a RGB LED rope light as an experiment for a single light that could do all. It works fine as a safelight with just the red LEDs on, but I don't like the "white" light it produces. Consequently, I only use it in red and still rely on a conventional bulb for the white space lighting. What I used is similar to the product shown here; http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,43629,70322&p=70326

But, YMMV with the HUE lights, I've seen them in the home center stores, but haven't paid much attention to them.
The major problem would likely be how "pure" the red light it produces is, and secondarily the brightness.
Make sure you do a proper test for the "safeness" if you decide to try it out.

good point. from a spectral aensitivity point of view many of the red LEDs should be safebut often their light intensity is too high for them to make ideal safe lights at close range. I tried some ,which would fog the paperwithin a few seconds;same with some of these s0-called safelight torches.they are more like a quick burning tool.

AgX · Nov 30, 2014

hao922 said:
... could be used as the darkroom safelight as I know the light can be adjusted to all sorts of colour.

Changing the colour of light by changing the relative luminosity of differently coloured lamps is something different than moving an emission edge or gap around the spectrum.

Photographic safelighting necessitates that edge or gap.

HUE LED light as safelight

hao922

Mainecoonmaniac

hao922

bdial

RalphLambrecht

AgX

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