200mW 473nm Labby - I feel like I stole it!

This was one of the first times that I've perceived myself to have gotten such a good deal, that I've felt bad.

This wasn't a *mint* labby when I stumbled across it on eBay. A portion of the power supply's mounting bracket was damaged, the cable-stay on the main 110V line had broken away, the key interlock was loose (but had been disabled anyway), and there were merely two loose red/black wires for TTL triggering the unit with 3-5V (and this triggering was required in order to power up the unit).

Nevertheless, at $182 for a 200mW labby, especially considering that the DPSS unit itself was flawless, I was ecstatic to have won the auction. After some minor repair work to the PSU, and the creation of a standalone battery-powered momentary and on/off TTL trigger box, I had my first real working 473nm DPSS labby.

I believe this unit was one laser in a pair of identical units. I remember reading a thread by the purchaser of this laser's twin. The other laser apparently didn't live up to expectations. I'm thrilled with mine. It LPMs at a dead-on, stable, 210 to 215mW. The output is beautiful, and this guy is the new treasure in my collection. The previous owner paid $1,850 for it new, 18 months ago.

Nice! Yeah you better watch out the mounties might be coming for you soon.

Wow, thats a great deal!

I guess its always a bit of gamble with items like these, but this one seems to have paid off very well

Got to love ebay scores!! Congratulations!!

I just scored one of those..."kind of feel bad" auctions. I got two very nice 5mW HeNe's with a lab style PSU for $1.75

Have fun with your new addition.

Gz for that great deal

473 rocks!

I recently got a good ebay deal on a 473nm lab too, but not as good as yours.
laserwave ~150mW for $250.

Wow. Congrats! That's quite a deal.

WOW. If I had saw that you would of had some serious competition on that acution rhd :eg:

Cheers on the beautiful laser... Must be awesome at night time.

Wow!
473nm is an awesome wavelength.

However, you pictures don't seem very 473nmish. The color looks very much more violet to me.
Is it your WB setting?

rhd, get us some outdoor beamshots bro!

That's really nice man

RA_pierce said:

Wow!
473nm is an awesome wavelength.

However, you pictures don't seem very 473nmish. The color looks very much more violet to me.
Is it your WB setting?

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You should see my photos of 445, they look downright purple.

I clearly am missing something when it comes to photographing beams in the blue area of the spectrum. How should I be setting my WB ?

rhd said:

You should see my photos of 445, they look downright purple.

I clearly am missing something when it comes to photographing beams in the blue area of the spectrum. How should I be setting my WB ?

Click to expand...

You shoot with a 60D, correct? I remember reading that somewhere.
If so, me too. I have my WB set to auto.

Normally I don't even bother manually selecting the WB with the camera since it does a decent job of getting colors right. However, usually with incandescent lighting indoors, my camera will get the blues wrong. Camera sensors are not that great with the blue spectrum so sometimes 405 and 445 come out with bands of colors from white in the center, to magenta, then blue. Usually this isn't a problem when the beam is properly exposed but sometimes the color is just wrong.
I am under the impression that when there is an intense blue light source in the room, the WB will think it needs to compensate and push the color spectrum to the warmer side, resulting in magenta-y blues and orange-y whites.

If that is the case, I will sometimes switch to a different, cooler light source (like LED, or use my ghetto-rig flash and diffuser). Opening up the curtains and getting some good ol' natural light is an option as well.

If all else fails, post processing magic will work just fine.
Shooting in RAW format allows you much more flexibility with post processing and makes fixing white balance much easier. I do not recommend shooting JPEGs because the color, tones, and overall quality is just not comparable to RAW images.
My camera came with software called Digital Photo Professional which is great for adjusting white balance, shadows, and all that stuff. I'm assuming some software was included with your camera as well.
DPP is very quick and easy to use and can convert your RAW images to 16 or 8 bit TIFF or Exif JPEGs.
If you do not have a RAW editor at your disposal, Photoshop has many tools you can use to correct colors. The "color balance" tool is great as well as "channel mixer" and "selective color." Although it is a little less convenient, an image editor like PS can definitely fix it if you have no other option.

Try experimenting with different exposure settings and lighting and if you haven't already, take a look at your RAW image editor (if you have one).
I'll look forward to seeing some more pictures of this labby. 473nm is my fav.

Rhd, you are very lucky, and that's the first pictures I've seen you take that actually look like 445 lol!