Lighting Light intensity for autoflowering plants (lux)?

[Grisbi]

Sounds awesome - hope you plan on keeping a grow journal so I can follow along!

yes i will do a grow diary, because i really will need your help for advise me, prevent disease and co , this will be my fist grow ever after 5years of studying
im freaking streesy like if i was growing childs....

im going to buy some wire , finish my led instalation and buy so flo organic nutient today, will do the diary as soon as i finished my led light ( i dont think people are interessed on how i setup my grow space )
best regards

 

[Death The Cultivator]

yes i will do a grow diary, because i really will need your help for advise me, prevent disease and co , this will be my fist grow ever after 5years of studying
im freaking streesy like if i was growing childs....

im going to buy some wire , finish my led instalation and buy so flo organic nutient today, will do the diary as soon as i finished my led light ( i dont think people are interessed on how i setup my grow space )
best regards

I'm always interested in grow room setups

 

[elcoloan]

I'm always interested in grow room setups

so am I! @Grisbi, please tag me too!

 

[Grisbi]

ok @elcoloan ,@damien50 @pg2052 , i will tag you guyz, tomorow its end of buying stuff and i start the diary, cant wait

 

[St. Tom]

I was trying to express that non staff often have opinions that are honest and true also. The people expressing ( creating Grow Journals) grows with XXX Brand Lights, thats who I refer to. Thats on all sites though.

just so you know bro we get nothing for free on here only seeds the same as the other cultivators and if something is shite i will say it is and i hope people know that and being a mod or staff on here is none paid in fact it can be a headache i just try point people in the right direction and be a friendly face :smoking:

 

[Grisbi]

hello guyz, hope you are doing well, do you know if theire is any coupon code for Rain science grow bags? gonna take 8 of their 7gallons pots

 

[The Iconoclast]

All you need if you have white lights is a $20 LUX meter. Think of your white lights basically as sunlight, the LUX readings will be virtually as good.

I just remember that 1000 LUX is a murky grey overcast day, (1/60sec iso100 ƒ2.8) and take it from there, every doubling of the LUX is one ƒ stop, or a doubling of the light. So sunlight would be say 5 stops or 5 doublings or 32k LUX.

 

[Srfr]

All you need if you have white lights is a $20 LUX meter. Think of your white lights basically as sunlight, the LUX readings will be virtually as good.

I just remember that 1000 LUX is a murky grey overcast day, (1/60sec iso100 ƒ2.8) and take it from there, every doubling of the LUX is one ƒ stop, or a doubling of the light. So sunlight would be say 5 stops or 5 doublings or 32k LUX.

Are you 100% sure of this? I've read so many times that this is not the case but it's kinda what I'm doing to get some idea of where to stick the lights, the rest is just watching the plants. I tend to stick too much into them! I'm beginning to think slightly less is definetly better than slightly more.

 

[The Iconoclast]

@Srfr,

Not sure what you are referring to. What exactly are you doubtful about, that it's possible to use a LUX meter to tell if the amount of white light hitting your plants is equivalent to full sunshine, hazy sun, or deep shade. Or what.

 

[The Iconoclast]

I think the most intuitive way to work out how much lights your plants are getting and whether you're happy with that is not to compare numbers to charts of other numbers, but compare numbers to other units that you are familiar with.

Full sunshine is very variable, depending on latitude and time of day and and surface normal angle to the sun's rays. However, if I use as a baseline full sunshine but with light hazy cloud, so you can see a clear shadow but it's softened a bit. We can all relate to that and if you knew your plants were getting that much LUX which is about 55,000 every day then you'd be very very happy with that. Now one stop darker than that would be very bright cloudy light, with soft but distinct shadows is about 27,000, and another stop darker is about 13,000.

So now you have this range you can get your head around 55k lux to say 20k lux that actually have some sort of visceral meaning to you, when you see a reading of 20k lux on your plants you understand this is not a sunny day but it's pretty bright and if they got that all day for 18 hours that not too shabby.

By using a LUX meter now I have a much more objective view. Like at some times the lights might appear a little dim to me and I might wonder if I should turn them up, but then later at night they look much brighter but the lux meter says they were both the same. This is the point I've come to finally.

Before I got my lux meter I would go out into the sun and take a photo of my hand, then I'd take a shot of my hand under my white lights and compare the exposures, that's also a good enough way to set your lights.

The main difference is between Sunlight and LED lighting is that the latter falls off very fast and that's really what you're checking with a lux meter, you're checking to see how you can best spread the light around and a LUX meter is exactly what you need, unless you're doing laboratory biological plant studies.