I seem to remember that different Super-Luminova lume colors have different brightness/longevity ... I am thinking of having a watch relumed, and the choices are green lume glowing green, and white lume growing green.
IIRC, green glowing lume is considered superior (that would be the case for both), but does the non-lumed color (white vs. green) affect performance at all?
Any infor on the impact of the choice of lume color on performance will be greatly appreciated! :)
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
There is the daylight colour and glow colour. My understanding is as follows.
Glow colour: green best, blue green fine, all the rest suck.
Daylight colour: no pigment giving a nasty off-white is best, after that you want the smallest amount of pigment possible so decent white probably the second best, or, possibly, sea green.
So, I think it probably wouldn't matter much which you choose.
Best wishes,
Bob
The best lume on any of my watches is on my White Knight. Pale green in daylight, but you can read a book with it at night.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
I believe the superluminova people say C3 (I think light green) is best .
That makes sense, on reflection. Without any pigment the luminous material is an off-white tending to sickly green. So, it might be that moving it to a bit more green takes the least color pigment. In general, I think the idea is to have the least color pigment possible.Originally Posted by Julian
Best wishes,
Bob
Martin,
Kent Parks has re-lumed two of my watches, by coincidence one in C1 and one in C3. Bob is correct, C3 is brightest. I will do a comparison test, and let you know what I find.
Hopefully, no pressure conversion units will be involved :wink:
Happy New Year to All,
Ted
Bill Yao's dials use white lume that glows green. I've been very happy, so far, with the night time legibility.
I put them under a fluorescent lamp for 30 minutes. (The lume manufacturer considers 90 minutes to be a 'full charge'). The initial brightness of C3 is much more than C1. Then I put them in a drawer for six hours; following that, I did the 'closet test'. After my old eyes got used to the dark, the C3 appeared to be about 50% brighter than the C1. In terms of actual brightness this is quite a lot because, as you probably know, the response of the eye is somewhat logarithmic.
In terms of daytime color, C3 is a very light green. If you're after a green more like the old radium lume, C3 may be a little light for you.
See here for a C3 vs. Tritium curve, which might help you to relate it's brightness to my favorite lume material. Don't be tempted to compare this graph with others like it - for some reason, the brightness units are per mg instead of the more normal per m2 or mm2.
Cheers,
Ted
Thanks all for your comments. So I take it that C3 has the best luminosity, and that it is light green in daylight color, and full green in glow color?
I ran the Yao Type-48 dial (white lume) against a Speedbird 2 relumed in C3 by Jack @ IWW ... Jack's lume lasted well throughout eight hours and outshone the Xao dial throughout the test. In the morning, the Yao lume was dead, and Jack's still glowing.
In fact, it is the Mark MCXLVIII with the Yao dial that I am considering to have relumed ... the low-light performance of the watch derives more from the polished edges of the hands which reflect light than from the lume glow. That is not to say that the Yao lume is inferior to other brands, but the comparison trial with the relumed Speedbird 2 was very impressive.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
Hi Crusader. Can you tell me please how the luminosity of your Sinn 656 compares against the aforementioned please?
F.T.F.A.
Sorry, the only test I ever did was the direct comparison of the yao-dial and the IWW-relumed one.
The 656 lume is not bad IMHO, but some have said on the Sinn forum that they are underimpressed ... let us say that the lume on the 656 is not so bad that I would consider having it relumed, so I would rate it a tad higher than the Yao lume.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
Thanks for that info.
White superluminova is crap. You only have to look at any Rolex to see how bad the white stuff can get.
As a rule, all of my white-lume watches (Yao Seiko, Limes, Hi-Dive) are dimmer than other colours (except the red lume on the Hi-Dive, which is an extremely poor performer in the dark). My problem with the greener lumes (DS-3) is that they are much less appealing in the light :cry:
Of course as Bob has taught us with his dial work, the volume of the lume has a strong impact on brightness. See any of Kent Park's or Jack's re-lumes, those gents pile it on when possible/needed and thus are able to balance a dial between hands and markers.
Agree, also I often thought about having this redone in white or vintage/offwhite
Problem is it won't be orginal anymore, not that it's much value in the watch or something but still.... :?
Re colour DS3 - have a look at Stefans elegant way of solving this, a few posts down
You also have to consider that green is the colour that the human eye is best adjusted for. So it should be cleaner and easier to look at.
Cheers
VA
Have you considered this nice orange colour? :
Look how bright it burns! :
Jim :?
That is superb lume. If Zeno buckled down and produced the Sea Hunter in a larger case they would have sold bundles.Look how bright it burns! :
Jim :?
... and no plane in sight. :D
* * *
By the way Bob, how are you getting on with the black-lume proposition?
john
THIN is the new BLACK
How come so many manufacturers fail to match the lume intesity of hands and dial?
Here's an example, the Davosa Insight I won in a lottery in december:
:scratch:
Noticed that the DS-3 lume was mentioned earlier in this thread.
The green lume looked good in daylight but was rather poor in the dark IMO.
Here's an example of major mismatch (although completely my own fault).
It actually looks better in this pic than IRL and it also faded quite fast.
/Stefan
Here is my guess, based on a little, very little, experience.
In luming the hands, the thickness of paint is pretty good, and one can use a paint with a high load of luminous material with very little color pigment, since there is no background color. So they are bright.
On dials with a background color of black there are three main strategies for adding luminous paint.
The first is to first print white characters/makers in order to have a light, reflective base, and put the luminous material on top of that. In doing this, you can use a luminous paint with the same loads of luminous material/colour pigment as with the hands. However, this adds to the height of the characters (which can lead to hand clearance problems), and increases the number of passes you have to make on the dial, which increases the registration problems (getting the characters exactly aligned for each printing), which is why you often find a white outline outside the area that has the luminous paint --- putting the luminous paint well inside the white painted characters makes registration more forgiving. I generally make 5 or 6 printing passes on each dial I make, which complicates things no end. This means the luminous material is bright, but the dial is much more complicated to make.
The second is to use one pass (perhaps two) with a paint that is both color and lume. This means that the pigment load is reduced, and the color pigment is increased, which leads to less strong luminousity. This means better characters, perhaps, but less bright luminous material.
The third is to use applied markers filled with luminous material. They can be filled with a very high load lume paint, and don't need a base color, since the silver bottom does nicely. This means that you have a simple arrangement and bright lume, but often with a loss of information (hour numerals) and a higher capital costs (making and installing the applied markers).
Look at the Davosa, Stefan. It has more information lumed (hours, minutes, seconds), but it is less bright. That's because, I take it, that they were using a lume/colour paint and only making one or two passes. The original DS-3 dial seems to have applied markers. The new DS-3 dial has painted markers. I can't tell whether the markers are outlined or not. But, in the latter two cases, there is less information being conveyed than with the Davosa.
Best wishes,
Bob
That sounds like a reasonable hypothesis, Bob.
Here's an example of the lume being applied inside the base colour.
Under normal lighting the lume colour is the same as the base colour, making the markers appear a uniform (and large) white.
Cheers,
Jim :)
Here's an example of the lume being applied "en-masse", although you can still see the base colour at the edges :
Strangely this doesn't burn too bright compared to, say, the Zeno 300m, and I think this is down to the addition of a yellow pigment to the paint compound.
Jim
All what Bob has said plus I have always assumed that dials and hands are never made by the watch manufacturers, but are procured from (different) specialist companies for dials and hands, respectively. The watch manufacturer ("system integrator", really, in modern managment terms) specifies the lume color, but has little control over lume intensity.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
Having said that, I notice that my Sinn 656 and Citizen Promaster Diver Auto have perfectly matched lume, as has the Yao Type 48 set in the Mark MCXLVIII.
The Yaoized Seiko Navigator has mismatched lume (almost ceratinly due to the difference in lume dot size/volume), as has the relumed GG-W-113 (certainly due to the lume dot volume). The Damasko DC 66 has a marked lume intensity diffrential between hands and dial, as well as - unusually - a slight daylight color difference (the white on the dial is slightly creamy, the hands are stark white).
I reckon it a sign of a quality in a watch company if they are able to put out watches with matches lume color and intensity between dials and hands.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
That's a bit of a downer on Damasko, isn't it? Is it really that bad?
Cheers,
Jim
Thank you Bob, very enlightening (no pun intended) indeed, and more than a guess I suspect.
/Stefan
It's correct that the hands and dials are usually procured from different manufacturers and I'm sure I've never seen a Zeno where the lume on the hands and dial matches. If you were to wait until the dial was finished so you could send it to the hand manufacturer and say "match that", it could easily add 8 - 12 weeks to the project time.
99% of watch owners probably don't even notice and if they did, don't care.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
I'm worse. I do notice, and think it is a design fault if they do match. ;)
Best wishes,
Bob
Not bad enough to put me off the watch, but enough to notice (I think I can be pretty anal about the smallest details). Having said that, it would be much worse if the dial was brighter than the hands. :) But I don't think the color/lume differential was intentional, and it would be wrong to say that in this respect the Citizen and Sinn are exemplary.
Having said that: the Damasko has probably one of the finest crown systems in the world (all components ice-hardened), and I care less about the lume since having designated my tritium-vial watches my "night-activity" watches.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
:shock: Dare we ask what you are timing with your "night-activity" watches?
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Can't be what you're thinking Eddie, it'd be morning by the time he'd got all that armour off :wink::shock: Dare we ask what you are timing with your "night-activity" watches?
Eddie
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
I suspected it was going to sound funny when I wrote it:shock: Dare we ask what you are timing with your "night-activity" watches?
Eddie...
The answer is: walking the dog in the dark season, and wearing a watch while sleeping so I can read the time when I wake up at night (frequently, alas) without the need for glasses and light.
BTW: how do the Scandinavian forumers cope with the extended dark periods in the winter? Does that affect your "lume behavior", i.e. do you pay more attention to the lume on your watches with a view to the dark season (which must be even longer in Scandinavia than here on the 50th parallel), or is there a huge market for keychain flshlights? :wink:
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
You don't need to take the armour off ... there are convenient flaps. Imagine having to undress every time the opportunity arises ...Can't be what you're thinking Eddie, it'd be morning by the time he'd got all that armour off :wink::shock: Dare we ask what you are timing with your "night-activity" watches?
Eddie
... you'll be there all day (and night) dressing and undressing. :roll:
john
THIN is the new BLACK
Oh no. We just keep a blubber lamp running in every room all night. Only 18 hours per day, I live in the South :wink: Of course, tritium tubes are a Viking's best friend for telling time:
(Luminox at sunset, 1430, local*)
Cheers,
Gert
*If you believe this, you may also be interested in buy my controling stake in the bridge to Malmö :wink:
PS around X-mas it really does get dark right after 1600 :( GB
And let's all not forget that there is a difference between LumiNova, Superluminova, Lumibrite, and other luminous paints. No one seems to be making a distinction between them, but are rather making distintions about this color or that color. The actual chemistry of the luminous material may be more important than the color of the pigment used in the paint. So a C3 from company X (which uses Lumibrite) might be more luminous than a C1 from company Y (which uses SL).
Even better, since Superluminova, etc., are trade names, we could refer to the base chemicals: Strontium Aluminate and Zinc-Sulfide. ;)
Best wishes,
Bob
I took that into consideration, but I think all the new stuff is based on SrAlO3:Eu. But there are slightly different formulations between them as they dope them with different elements (besides for luminescing at different colors), which may make one shine brighter, or longer, or both.
Example: Superluminova is said to be initially brighter than Luminova (same company - Nemoto), but not shine for as long. By most accounts Lumibrite (Seiko) is initially brighter than SL, but I don't know if it lasts as long as SL through the night.
.
Why can't we use the same stuff that glowing sea creatures use (like a anemonies and jellyfish)?
:?: :?: :?:
john
THIN is the new BLACK
Flaps, or even a coat of chainmail, don't solve every problem. :wink:
One of the nobles in the 12th-century Crusader States was captured by the Muslims after having separated from his troops in order to take a shit behind some bushes ... (few and far between in the Middle East, apparently). :shock:
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
Luciferin is an organic molecule, and a one-shot deal. You add the right activating chemicals and it will glow for several minutes or up to a few hours. Then it fades and is gone.
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