Thread: Black Light

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Last year I purchased the Glow in the Dark Tekno Bubbles and used an incandecent 75W Blacklight Flood bulb - i'm sorry to say it wasn't very good (note, I am using the outdoors)...

Has anyone tried any of the bulbs here

I am particularly curious about the CFLs and the LED...

Any help much appreciated...

Hello... I have 3 of this very bulb bought from this very website. They are great. They are however a little different from Flourescent blacklight bulbs though in that they are spots and only light up a much smaller diameter (which in some cases can be preferable)

Also they emit more visible light than the flourescent but still give you the glow as well. I used them in a Pepper's ghost effect last year at a non-profit haunt and they worked out ok for my needs!

PS. Plus they stay cool to the touch!

I have heard that the CFLs and the LEDs are both very good in their true ultraviolet output. However, I have not used them yet. I have some of the LEDs ordered.

Ultraviolet CFL fixtures, and LED's both emit a good amount of UV light, giving great blacklight results.
(so do florescent light fixtures, but you've probably discovered that already)

This is due to the method used for producing ultraviolet light - florescent fixtures use an energized plasma (high energy, lots of light in the UV range) and just filter out the visible wavelengths, and LED's can be created to produce light at an exact wavelength, so they don't even need a filter - the only light emitted is at that "blacklight" wavelength.

The incandescent "blacklight" bulbs (of any variety) are not very effective, due to the element used to produce light - a glowing filament in a vacuum chamber. Most of the light emitted by those filaments is in the visible and infrared range, with only a little being emitted in the ultraviolet range.
The coating on them is intended to block all the wavelengths of light except ultraviolet, effectively making them "blacklight" bulbs, but as others have noted, this tends to make them very hot.
And, sadly, a lot of light in the visible spectrum escapes anyway, effectively obscuring the results of any ultraviolet light, so a lot of people see them as expensive "purple light bulbs".

So, yeah, use CFL's and LED's - they'll work great.

Originally Posted by Shadow Man

Hello... I have 3 of this very bulb bought from this very website. They are great. They are however a little different from Flourescent blacklight bulbs though in that they are spots and only light up a much smaller diameter (which in some cases can be preferable)

Also they emit more visible light than the flourescent but still give you the glow as well. I used them in a Pepper's ghost effect last year at a non-profit haunt and they worked out ok for my needs!

PS. Plus they stay cool to the touch!

I assume you are referring to the CFL bulbs...Do you think it would be good enough to uplight my new bubble fogger outdoors?

Originally Posted by ahwahneeliz

I have heard that the CFLs and the LEDs are both very good in their true ultraviolet output. However, I have not used them yet. I have some of the LEDs ordered.

If you can, please let me know how the LEDs perform when you receive them...

I'm referring to the exact same "Ultra Violet 18 UV LED Blacklight Bulb" from the link you included... I order 2 of those and 1 "Ultra Violet 28 UV LED Blacklight Bulb" from Blacklight.com last year.

I got a couple of these led bulbs last week, and they work pretty good.
2 x 110V AC Screw-in 38 UV LED Light Bulb - eBay (item 330232023410 end time Sep-25-08 00:14:01 PDT)

Last year I built several small UV Spots from UV LEDs I bought on EBAY that ran on 9 volt batteries. Each spot had 5 LED's in the array and I was able to place them to light objects 20 - 30 feet away. the LEDs are very effective for this. For a general / flood lighting effect I would go with the florescents. They light up a much broader area then the LED's

From those of you that have used CFLs, LEDs and Flourecent tubes - what do you recommend to light up my bubble fogger that will be used out doors?

This is the same bubble fogger that can be found here

The bubbles do not appear to go very high, but this is indoors, outdoors, wind, etc. may play role...

I like the idea of the LED's b/c they do not get hot (I assume the same is true for the CFLs).

thanx.