Gel translumination guide for diyers

[Avery louie]

As you guys probably know, I have been working on a super low cost gel system.   As part of my research on the box, I tested as many types of gel illumination as I could afford.   Among the tech used were:

1W blue led

8x8 rgb led matrix

12 v blue led strip (intended for cars)

3x4 blue led matrix

4x4 electroluminescent Panel

Cell phone screen (samsumg Galaxy note ii)

Computer screen (dell e6410)

2x regular (through hole) LEDs.

I have written up my findings and comparisons on my blog, here.  I is quite image heavy.

-sent from my transluminator

[Thomas Landrain]

That's an awesome comparison study Avery! 

You should have a look to our Blue Note Project at La Paillasse. We still have to document it further but basically it works like a charm and we use it as our main transilluminator in the lab. The prototype as it is only costs 20 euros to make :)

http://www.lapaillasse.org/news/1078/le-bluenote-project-prototype-2/

Cheers,

Thomas

[Simon Quellen Field]

You might try one of these instead of the cellphone:

"http://www.tmart.com/Replacement-Backlight-Screen-for-iPhone-4-4S-White_p179648.html?fixed_price=us_us&utm_source=base&utm_medium=organic&utm_term=87009366&utm_campaign=product&gclid=CLrjwrTr4bgCFYgB4god2EEA-w"

Without the LCD and polarizer in the way, it should be much brighter.

And for three and a half bucks, the price is right.

Nice and thin, even illumination. Use a blue gel filter if you really need just blue light.

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[Avery louie]

Thanks for the info!  I think for the box I will go with an EL panel, because the design is really really clean, from a design, manufacturing, and use standpoint.  At the moment, it is 4x4 inches or 10x10 cm, and is useable all the way up to the edge, but it is possible to build it larger.

You can check out a post on the transluminator design here.

--A

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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Wow, $3.45 is a damn nice price for that iPhone backlight! Is that just LEDs with a diffuser?

Avery - all the LED options you tried will look 100% better with a decent diffuser as well. Here's some option in Inventables - there's probably cheaper sources to be found too:

https://www.inventables.com/categories/electrical-lighting/light-diffusers

Patrik

[Avery louie]

@Patrik, I photographed them all with diffusers, but they were still a little darker at the edges, especially that solo 1W LED!  I think LEDs are a great choice in general, but I think like this or this, might work better which are boxes designed to make "optical flats" for lens corrections in astrophotography.  For those not interested in the link, they basically take four leds or so and blast them into a white box, and then diffuse the output with some kind of translucent perspex.  This kind of bright lighting is perfect for taking pictures of plates, but it might be a pain to store if you don't have a lot of room, or if you want to keep a lot of gel boxes around, so I am going with EL panels for my design the moment.

At the lab we call the diffused setup a "bucket of light" because we literally make the diffuser out of one of those big plastic buckets.  It makes it WAY easier to take pictures of teeny colonies!

--A

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