One great thing about DIY is you can make things the way you want. I really liked the OSRAM 400 HQI WD but when the eBay supply dried up and you could only find them for around $80.00 they were not a low cost answer, at that price a lot of other lamps start to look good like the HMI lamps.

What we have here it three cheep China HQI lamps with small arc's and small lamp shells all that cost less than $23 shipped.

Link

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZgreatdelQQhtZ-1

The lamps.

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The lamps are a HQI 175 watt RX7 mount with a 22mm x 14mm arc tube with a lamp voltage of 150v.

Next is a 250 watt HQI with the FC2 mounting and a 23mm x 18 mm arc tube with a lamp voltage of 100v.

And the last one is a Mogul base T15 lamp shell with a 32mm x 23mm arc tube and made to run on M59 ballast at 135v

The all are rated at 85 CRI at 10,000K

My goal is to increase the power level which makes the color temp lower on all the MH lamps until the color temp gets around 6500K. I have already done this with a small test on the HQI 175 lamp and I'm going to do the same with the other two lamps.

The life span of all the lamps is rated at 8000 hours I have no idea how long they will last at the higher power levels but 2000 to 4000 hours might be a good guess. Even if they only last 1000 hours it is still cheaper than a HMI lamp.
I believe that the 10000K lamps run a lower pressure than the 6500k lamps and they have no mercury to be seen in the lamps like my MHI or HTI or most all the other lamps I have seen they should be low in the red range.

Because of the lower pressure they can take a lot more power with out the internal pressure making them expand and pop.

All the lamps will have forced air-cooling with a 92mm fan at 2500 rpm all the time they are run and will be run in the horizontal position with the pro reflector.

The 175 and 250 are running on M155 ballast at 400 and 500 watts.

The 400 watt lamp is running on 1000 watt MH ballast at about 1000 watts.

Right now I have both the 250 and the 400 watt breaking in. I want to get about 20 to 30 hours on both before I set the final power level.

I didn't think the 400 watt lamp was running at 1000 watts and I had to re check thing lots of times before I finally believed it. To me it doesn't look that bright and it might not be. The color temp is still a little high but is getting lower all the time.
The arc of the 400 watt lamp is nice and stable at 1000 watts and up to 1200 watt and then is begins to wander all over the place.

If the 400 watt can be run at 900 or 1000 watts this might be a good cheep way to make a 1k PJ with out buying a expensive long arc lamp or a short life more expensive ballast HMI setup and you get a two shell lamp which many people like.

The 250 watt might be a little less scary for most people. It started out with a little lower color temp and the arc has always been stable. I have been running it at 500 watts for break in but I might up that to 600 watts soon The M155 ballast is not the best match a S51 ballast would be better I have one in my main PJ and will use it to find the power level before I'm all done.
The smaller arc tube of the 250 is vary intense at 500 watts and it will work well with a condenser system.

A closer look at the two smaller lamps. The 250 watt is a lot smaller than the 400 watt in both W and L

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The 175 lamp has a higher lamp voltage of 150v it is a strange lamp for that reason and works fine with the M155 ballast right out of the box. And makes around 400 watts with that ballast. In past testing it looked better through the LCD at a lower power level so I will do more test at the 300 to 400 watt range.


More later. Burning in.

This looks to be VERY interesting. I am staying very tuned to this bat station.

The spek sheet.

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I'll definitely be tuning in as well. I just bought a 400w s51 ballast but decided too late I want to run lower wattage bulbs with a condenser so that 250w jobby might be just the ticket. I will also be using an LCD from a portable Toshiba sd-p2800 (848 x 480) that seems to have overblown reds.

I set up the LCD and some fresnles with the 250 watt lamp, no real reflector with a 80" screen. I used a 600mm/220mm combo.

Then I found out that I don't have a extra video cable for the LCD and the LCD is the kind that is black with no power.

So I puled the LCD out and did a LUX reading with a 220mm rear fresnel and a 6x9 condenser lens at around 375 watts anbd 475 watts. I used a stainless steal reflector but it is brown right now from the 2000 watt lamp. I have a new pro reflector and I will get setup fot that soon.

I only took a few readings.

For the 375 watt power seting I got 3000 LUX in the middle and for the 475 watt setting I got 4540 LUX

Using a 5% LCD the middle would be around 150 LUX which means this system is working good in the middle. ( the condenser is really short fl for this setup. I had to turn the lamp mount so the condenser lens could be placed closer to the lamp

The out side of the screen is a lot dimmer at 1200 LUX or around 60 LUX with a LCD.

The color is OK not really blue looking at all.

I didn't take any pictures tonight. My wife was asking me if people really like looking at a blank white screen?

I will find a vga cable and do some more testing.

I plan on using the light dimmer to allow changing the power level to see the effect on the color temp and quality. I already tested this and it works fine. I should be able to sweep from 250 watts to about 600 watts.

I found my vga cable so the LCD now works. I hate the color of the screen so far.

The strange part is the LCD looks good by looking at it but the screen looks washed out and blue. I will add some pictures tonight.

Well after dark the screen was a little washed out but still looked like it had a grey layer on the top. the camera picture might be slightly better than the real pj image but it is close.

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I did a lot of adjustments on the picture but could never get it any better. I also ran different power levels but the hazy low contrast picture remained.

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I'm really unhappy with the color of this lamp so much so I am going to try the 400 watt lamp to see it it looks any better.

This is too bad, I was hoping for a small arc lamp that would be bright and work well with a short fl setup like the 220mm fresnel and the 6x9 condenser I have. The arc image at the triplet fills the triplet almost 95% right now so with a larger arc I will start wasting light.

Interesting results AV. Any way to just dial back the blue on the panel to overcome the push?

I will be watching for the other lamp results.

I wish I had made one of those spectrum things that they made in Elkins thread to look at the spectrum. I bet the lamps are making some large amounts of the wrong color spikes in the spectrum like purple or orange instead of red. I think Elkin may be right on the fact that you don't want the lamp making any large color spikes other than red, green, blue.

I have lowered the blue all the way down and things still look strange. You have to be here in real life to see it. If I had not seen a good lamp like my HMI 1200 I might think it was just a low contrast LCD. I may still stick a known good lamp behind it just to see how it looks.

It sure would be nice to be able to determine the exact frequency a panel is going to pass, then go back and measure the real lumen output of the bulb in those three frequencies of light. Maybe even classify each of the more suitable choices based on this (with maybe an overdrive option).

My bulb definitely has a green push to it, that I have to tone down in my receiver and at my panel.

I setup the 400 watt lamp at 1000 watts tonight. I don't expect this lamp to be much better than the 250 watt and it wasn't.

It did look slightly better than the 250 watt lamp and almost like the PJ from years ago in cheep bars.

The new style Buhl triplet that I have does not focus near as well as the old one I have and I need to make sure it is not trashing the contrast befor I say the 10000K lamps suck. when I look at the LCD it looks great just the projected image looks poor.

I will hook up a 1200 watt HTI lamp soon to see if the image looks like it has normal contrast.

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It was about 85 LUX in the middle and 43 on the side so it is dim compared to my 1200 watt lamps. I dont have the pro reflector instaled.

My 1200 watt lamp with a reflector was giving around 275 lux with around the same size screen! All is not fair here, the MHI1200 is running at about 1240 watts and the 1000 watt lamp is around 9000 watts and has no real reflector.

AV, I think you meant 900watts. (otherwise you work for the power company!)

For clarity, you are trying to run a cheap 400 watt bulb at 1000watt, but are measuring closer to 900 watts, correct?

AV, could you be experiencing effects not related to the lamps themselves?

Maybe you can replace the light engine with a known quantity, get everything back the exact way you like it, then snap some comparative pics for later. Then swap the light engine back out with the new stuff?

I guess that probably means some solid work though, making the light engine swappable like that ...

While I can understand the colors being off, I don't really see how a smaller arc lamp can have contrast issues versus a larger arc one?

I have been running the 400 watt at 900 watts and over 1000 watts for days.

I kept going into the room and saying this lamp is just not that bright but I have gotten use to looking at the 1200 watt lamps or the 2000 watt lamp so I was just thinking it was me but the LUX meter says it's not that bright.

Before I give up I will install a normal lamp. All I have right now is 1200 watt lamps but that will work I can do that fairly fast.

I just think the lamps make the wrong color.

I was planing to to a more compleat testing by doing LUX readings of pure red green blue screes and comparing the color shift at different power levels but the lamps just look a little sick.

For the final test I will hook the 400 watt lamp to a 2000 watt balast setup and wach it melt.

You only live once.

I did some quick test last night with a CFC lamp and with a 50 watt halogen lamp and the LCD had great color and contrast. I don't plan on any more testing with these lamps. If any one wants them they can have them for free + shipping.

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