Laser & Flashlight BEAMSHOTS

Had this weird idea, so since I don't have a fog machine or any way to produce some sort of fog, I thought of closing off my bathroom, burning a facial tissue (burns quite slowly if it's just sparked, not blazed) and use the smoke from that to bring out the laser beams.

I wore 3 sets of glasses at once (My prescriptions, laser glasses, and general sealed off safety goggles to seal my eyes out from the smoke... it will burn your eyes if you're in for too long without them!) and a mask, kinda feel like I overdid it because it was just a tissue, but I guess you can never be so sure My bathroom was the perfect place to do this because it's a small sealed off room with a powered ventilation system, and I burned the tissue in the sink so if anything flame related happened I have immediate access to water.

Turned out pretty good, this was my first experience with using heavily polluted air to bring out beams. I've used air polluted with sand dust before to try to bring out laser beams, but it was nothing like this.

I took a flashlight in with me as a light source because the vent system turns on when the light does, but it turned out to be quite an amazing sight, I had forgot that the flashlight I have has a collimated beam.




Flashlight on laser tripod



The sparkling white beam was really nice to see, and unlike the laser beam shots it's quite... diluted? Hard to think of a description for it.

Laser 303


303 on laser tripod


Room illuminated by flashlight, beam still quite visible

Others

From left to right: 800mW 520nm, 500mW 445nm, 2.9W 445nm


800mW of 520nm


Sanwu Pocket series, 500mW of 445nm

Please feel free to post your best beam shots, I'd love to take a look!

-E.P.

Great beam pics! Adapt and overcome....lol
Danny

I made the mistake of showing a guy the ability of my six MS Envies with new M140 diodes to burn newsprint in my apartment. Set off all the smoke alarms before I was able to get it outside. I think fog is still better for this purpose, but admire your attempt to get these photos.

Nicely done! Especially like the second picture.

Could fog up bathroom with just running hot water for a bit. Some like heating a drop of vegetable glycerin. Personally I just use take a couple of puffs from a vaporizer.

InfinitusEquitas said:

Nicely done! Especially like the second picture.

Could fog up bathroom with just running hot water for a bit. Some like heating a drop of vegetable glycerin. Personally I just use take a couple of puffs from a vaporizer.

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Thanks IE, hmm never thought of that, the hot water bit. Though wouldn't it condense?

Not unless you're fond of overiceced drinks while you're at it :beer:

The bigger problem is that it will fog up your lenses pretty fast too, but for a few beamshots and quick pictures it beats having to deal with smoke. Just need to be extra careful with the mirror and shiny faucets.

Great pics EP. Very clear and clean. I don't know about you guys but I could look at beam pics all the time and not get tired of looking. As long as they're in focus that is.

Thanks Olympus, here's a couple others:


Felt like the world's brightest flashlight :crackup: The camera didn't like the light flood either in this one...

Also, just found out how to get the 445nm to show when taking pictures of them. A lot of the times they look purple on camera, and when I was playing around in photoshop I realized, what's making them purple is just the camera inserting excess red. Went to RGB, and filtered out virtually all red from the picture. Take a look:

VS.

The quality is ever so slightly diminished, but IMO it's worth it for extra-accurate color indication.

nice find!! +3 from me.

Thats a great pic rarely captured of the focal point. I love how pin point the beam is.

looks like the beam on your 532nm is split, doing TEM01. my spartan had a similar problem fter I dropped it once

Shakenawake said:

looks like the beam on your 532nm is split, doing TEM01. my spartan had a similar problem fter I dropped it once

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Very good eye, but that's actually my 520nm build with a foreign contaminant on the diode window. The lens is also a bit dirty which is no help anyway I made a thread about it.

oh i see, 520 indeed. too bad. I've had fairly good luck ceaning diode windows. the 9mm and 5.6mm diodes are easy. the tiny 3.8mm diodes can be tricky, but i'ver cleaned those too. though none I've cleaned had something burned on. good luck with that

Shakenawake said:

looks like the beam on your 532nm is split, doing TEM01. my spartan had a similar problem fter I dropped it once

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I have a 532 with a split beam. Is this from misaligned crystals always or could a scratched diode window cause this as well? I ask because I always have been very careful with my lasers even when putting them down i do it gently.