During my own builds, I have found certain things here on LL of invaluable help, things like DeathRay's wiring diagram and Dazzla's focal calculator-- resources I have turned to again and again. Hopefully, some of you will find this chart half as useful.
Bear in mind that many other bulbs might work for you. I tried to limit selections to those with appropriate color temps, decent CRI, and manageable shape and size. I also only included bulbs that have actually been bought and used by projector builders (the Eye Cera, for instance, though purportedly an excellent bulb has yet to be released).
This is obviously a work in progress and I welcome (and would appreciate) additions, corrections, etc. No doubt I missed several good bulbs -- please let me know about it. If possible, send me the specs of the lamp or a link to where I might glean them.
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EDIT: I was recently asked via PM to clarify in this thread what CRI and Color Temp really mean, and what values are preferable. As I understand it, CRI (Color Rendering Index) is an objective measure of a light source's ability to reproduce color accurately across the entire spectrum. I don't have the knowledge to go into it any further than that, really, but suffice it to say you want a lamp with as high a CRI rating as possible. Ideally that means 90 or above. Color Temperature represents a lamp's baseline "tint". The jury is out on which temp is ideal, partially because different temps seem to interact differently with any given LCD panel, but it is universally accepted that we want something in the range of 4000-6500k.
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