Luxeon Rebel ES 'lime' - pics and PAR

[jedimasterben]

Yo guys. So I've been wanting to test out the Luxeon Rebel ES lime ever since I saw Dave Fason's test Nanobox Duo at Reefapalooza. I had to have my own to play with and figure out some good color ratios. Steve's LEDs was the first to have them mounted and for sale, I believe RapidLED is planning on having them mounted, as well, but I don't have an ETA.

So anyway, I asked Steve's when they would be ready, and they replied that they'd have them Wednesday (of last week), and that they'd be sending me some along with some other LEDs to help figuring out the color ratios. So here we are.


The Setup

For this test, I'll be using the following LEDs, mounted to a 12" MakersLED heatsink with two layers of 'sand' diffuser on the acrylic splash shield, powered by Meanwell LDD drivers, two inside a MakersDRIVER for manual control, two mounted to a custom PCB for simple on/off:

6x 4000K 85CRI neutral white Rebel ES
12x 445nm royal blue Rebel ES
4x 475nm blue Rebel
2x 505nm cyan Rebel
2x 630nm red Rebel
2x wide-spectrum PC amber Rebel
6x wide-spectrum lime Rebel ES


They were split into the following channels:
CH1: 6x 4K NW
CH2: 6x lime
CH3: 12x RB
CH4: 4x B, 2x C, 2x R, 2x PCA

Channels 1, 2, and 3 were run at 1A, channel 4 was run at 700mA.


Pictures were taken with a Canon Rebel T2i using the stock 18-55mm lens, aperture priority, f4.0, ISO 100, white balance adjusted in Adobe Lightroom.


PAR measurements were taken using the Apogee SQ-110 quantum sensor connected to a digital multimeter. The royal blue LED string was measured separately and is the only measurement that is adjusted for quantum sensor sensitivity deficiency for blue spectrum. The PAR sensor is exactly 22" away from the diodes on-axis.



Ok, now that all that's out of the way, let's get to the meat of it. Holy crap, guys. The lime are insanely bright. I can't get over what they bring to the table. With just NW alone, the tank had a slightly purplish hue, and while still bright, the lime absolutely blew it away. Even turning the NW string off and only using lime looked fantastic. The best looking combination, though, is half lime and half NW, maybe even with a bit more lime than that, which really makes it easy to change up current combinations - either remove half of your NW LEDs and put lime in, or add in lime on their own driver and run both down to around 50%. Lime blends very well with royal blue, just like white LEDs do, so keep them clustered closely, and diffuse if possible. This array I built is a halide KILLER!


Pictures

This is with all LEDs at 100% intensity.

Only NW

Only lime

Only RB/B/C/R/PCA

NW 100%, lime 0%, the rest 100%

Lime 100%, NW 0%, the rest 100%

Lime 50%, NW 50%, the rest 100%

My photography skills are not the best, and my lens is not great, but the colors are as accurate as possible (only very minor adjustments in Lightroom).


Almost forgot about PAR


PAR READINGS

NW 0%, lime 0%, the rest 100%
87 PAR


NW 100%, lime 0%, the rest 100%
111 PAR


NW 0%, lime 100%, the rest 100%
114 PAR


NW 50%, lime 50%, the rest 100%
114 PAR


NW 100%, lime 100%, the rest 100%
138 PAR




Conclusion

Lime is looking to be a fantastic addition to LED arrays. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Maybe, maybe not, but it's still really awesome, and I very much look forward to having my full tank lighting include plenty of lime.



tl:dr
Add lime. Do it.


Thanks again to Steve's LEDs for providing the LEDs!

 

[revhtree]

Great review! Thanks for sharing!

Lime huh? Something to consider!

 

[jedimasterben]

Yep, a very interesting LED, Philips is doing some great work with phosphor conversion, started with PC-amber, now lime, and hopefully there is some market that would benefit from a wide-spectrum blue so that we could use it, but I doubt that will happen unfortunately.

 

[proietti]

Judging from the photos it looks like we might not need whites in our set ups anymore. We can achieve an ideal light by fitting all the blues needed for photosynthesisand OCW's PCAmbers and Limes for our viewing pleasure . What do you reckon?

 

[jedimasterben]

Eh, sorta kinda. It does look different with lime and no white, but I don't know if it is better or not. I much prefer a mix of the two, 50/50 or even maybe a little more skewed to lime.

 

[gtbarsi]

Eh, sorta kinda. It does look different with lime and no white, but I don't know if it is better or not. I much prefer a mix of the two, 50/50 or even maybe a little more skewed to lime.

It is hard to do a size by side comparison form the picks, but it looks like the lime really makes the greens pop, the 50/50 mix does look really nice.
Does the lime seem to mute the pop of some of the red / orange, or is that just the way it looks in the picks? I can not tell what is really red / orange or might be more white and simply reflecting the available spectrum.

 

[jedimasterben]

It is hard to do a size by side comparison form the picks, but it looks like the lime really makes the greens pop, the 50/50 mix does look really nice.
Does the lime seem to mute the pop of some of the red / orange, or is that just the way it looks in the picks? I can not tell what is really red / orange or might be more white and simply reflecting the available spectrum.

I really don't have anything that is red or orange in the tank minus a maxi-mini nem that you can't see in the pic. I'm about to take this lighting down in place of my full final array (which does heavily incorporate lime), so I'll have more thoughts on that as time goes on and I start to restock my tank.

I will say that the lime eliminates/prevents the purple color made by mixing red and blue (so warm/neutral white and royal blue), so that may be what you are seeing the effect of.

 

[gtbarsi]

It is hard to do a size by side comparison form the picks, but it looks like the lime really makes the greens pop, the 50/50 mix does look really nice.
Does the lime seem to mute the pop of some of the red / orange, or is that just the way it looks in the picks? I can not tell what is really red / orange or might be more white and simply reflecting the available spectrum.

I really don't have anything that is red or orange in the tank minus a maxi-mini nem that you can't see in the pic. I'm about to take this lighting down in place of my full final array (which does heavily incorporate lime), so I'll have more thoughts on that as time goes on and I start to restock my tank.

I will say that the lime eliminates/prevents the purple color made by mixing red and blue (so warm/neutral white and royal blue), so that may be what you are seeing the effect of.

Whatever the circled object / color is the lime seems to mute it a little. The 50/50 mix seems to be better than the lime at 100%

 

[proietti]

Eh, sorta kinda. It does look different with lime and no white, but I don't know if it is better or not. I much prefer a mix of the two, 50/50 or even maybe a little more skewed to lime

Surely the OCW's would produce the white? But without the damaging yellow

 

[jedimasterben]

Surely the OCW's would produce the white? But without the damaging yellow

OCW is coined for 470nm blue, 500nm cyan, and 660nm deep red. You're missing everything below ~450nm and from ~510nm to ~655nm. There is no such thing as 'damaging yellow'. The only light that is damaging for corals is ultraviolet.