While I was rearranging a box of randomly assorted lamps and bulbs, I ran across this little oddity. As you can see, it's a medium screw base PAR38 lamp, but with a twist--it has a colored dichromatic coating!
(you can click through to Flickr for all photos)
Viewed head-on, the front surface has a wrinkly reflective silver appearance from the coating on the inside of the lens (the front of the lens is smooth). But viewed from an angle, some quite nice blue and magenta hues become visible as ambient light passes through the dichroic coating (or coatings) and bounces off the reflector.
Turning it on, it produces a very nice, saturated green, tending a bit towards blue. I was sadly unable to capture it photographically, and the below is a poor attempt to color-correct a photo to do justice to the real thing. In reality the center white spot doesn't exist, the green is evenly saturated through the beam. It's just too bright in the center and overwhelms my camera.
View the lamp (on this time) from an extreme enough angle, though, and you can see that it's kicking a whole lot of magenta out towards the sides.
And finally, scraping the lamp along a white surface, the split colors become even more apparent. The magenta band comes out in such a tight band at such an extreme angle that you'd probably never notice it in many normal applications. As before, that white spot is actually a vivid green that confounds my camera (or perhaps its operator) to capture.
Anyone else have experience with these lamps? I haven't been able to find reference to any similar product online, so I would guess they aren't made any more--not a huge surprise, they were probably quite expensive compared to a more conventionally tinted flood. Still a cool product, though.
(you can click through to Flickr for all photos)
Viewed head-on, the front surface has a wrinkly reflective silver appearance from the coating on the inside of the lens (the front of the lens is smooth). But viewed from an angle, some quite nice blue and magenta hues become visible as ambient light passes through the dichroic coating (or coatings) and bounces off the reflector.
Turning it on, it produces a very nice, saturated green, tending a bit towards blue. I was sadly unable to capture it photographically, and the below is a poor attempt to color-correct a photo to do justice to the real thing. In reality the center white spot doesn't exist, the green is evenly saturated through the beam. It's just too bright in the center and overwhelms my camera.
View the lamp (on this time) from an extreme enough angle, though, and you can see that it's kicking a whole lot of magenta out towards the sides.
And finally, scraping the lamp along a white surface, the split colors become even more apparent. The magenta band comes out in such a tight band at such an extreme angle that you'd probably never notice it in many normal applications. As before, that white spot is actually a vivid green that confounds my camera (or perhaps its operator) to capture.
Anyone else have experience with these lamps? I haven't been able to find reference to any similar product online, so I would guess they aren't made any more--not a huge surprise, they were probably quite expensive compared to a more conventionally tinted flood. Still a cool product, though.
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