Here's what I had posted on another forum:
For those PM'ing me about the lume, here's a more detailed explanation:
The color depicted in photographs can be deceptive. You can't really use "too much" lume; regardless of the quantity, the molecule has a pre-programmed color & peaks after it's exposed to a certain light temperature, regardless of how long it's exposed to the same light source; it can only be one color/hue/strength at it's brightest. Using more lume powder in your mix will not make it a deeper shade of blue, or green, etc. Here's the pure lume, not mixed down with any binders or varnish:
It's the same color in it's thick, pure, powdered form as the lume after mixed, applied & dried.
If you check Tritec's Superluminova website, it explains on each shade of lume what temp of light exposure results in a peak charge, when it hits peak and how long the peak lasts before it fades, how fast the peak tapers off, and how long the fade will burn before completely discharged.
Keep in mind, even on my gens at a full charge, you
can see it for a few minutes in average room light before it starts to fade off, but these lumes are really only designed for use in pitch-black environments (upper atmosphere at night for pilot's watches, deep sea darkness for divers, etc.). You have to be in
complete darkness, with your eyes totally adjusted to the dark in order to actually see the "true" lasting effects of the lume's staying-power. If there's even enough ambient light in the room for your eyes to be able to recognize different objects and make your way around without bumping into things, there's too much light and any lume is going to appear half dead after only a few minutes, gen or not.
The reason why most rep's lumes are so dull is because the factory is using more varnish and less lume powder (primarily because of theft--a lot of lumes are worth as much, if not more, pound for pound as gold). Therefor, the manufactures are really going to skimp on it in order to deter theft and also get the biggest return on their investment.
The color's end-result reflected in the photograph all depend on a number of variables--the type of ambient light when shooting (incandescent, florescent, natural, tungsten, etc.), the length of the shutter/exposure, the aperture setting on the lens, how long the lume was charged, how long it's been since it was charged, etc. Sort of the same way your skin can appear completely different hues when shot with a flash, without a flash, inside, outside, etc.
Here's the most accurate-to-life comparison:
The only reason this gen shot appears to glow more is because the crown has been pulled out to stop the second hand--you can get a longer, brighter exposure with more depth of field, and trick the viewer by not being able to see the length of exposure by the blurred second hand (if the second had wasn't stopped, and this was a ten second exposure, you would see the second hand's glow, blurred and streaked in the photo over the markers on the dial, telling you how long the exposure was):
As you can see in the above pic, the exposure for that shot was 15 seconds long (notice the second hand). My exposure was only 1/8 of a second, which is why, even though my movement is running at 28,800 BPH, the second isn't distorted by the blur of its movement.
Side by side, this lume is a perfect match to the gen.
