Ok. Im still new to all of this... I know green appears to be the brightest to the human eye, but I suppose I'm looking for something around the brightness of a 532nm at 5mw, or slightly dimmer, but not much.
I'd say that's probably right.
I estimate that the dot from a 30mW 445nm is about the same perceived brightness as a true 5mW 532nm.
I gave a low-powered one to my brother who uses it for lectures. It's ~30mW (pulsed).
Neat tool, thanks for this.... so I guess the brightness I want is actually closer to 50mw for the 445nm wavelength... Is this safe to use without goggles? Or, I guess now that I'd have more though about it, I suppose what I really want is the highest, but safest power without needing goggles for the blue light.
EDIT: posted this before I read Ablaze's or Ash's post... so I'm looking for something close to around 20-30mw... but again, I'd like the highest power but still safe without requiring goggles. Thanks for all the quick replies
In general, you should use glasses for anything over 40mw. A 50mw will kind of hurt your eyes to look at. At that power you still have to be very careful not to shine the laser directly into anyone's eye.
yep, just what i would've guessed. a 450@80mw is 68% as bright as 532@5mw according to the calculator. my 1W is just slightly brighter beam then my 532@5mw even though the dot is much brighter (well, not exactly brighter, but scatters more light)
O-Like and Lazerlands I think have this same pointer. It is nice and the output is much more stable than most 532nm pointers. It is a little to bright to look at the spot indoors unless you have a big hallway. I had to squint away from it to take a picture.
Sorry about the necropost here, but I said I'd purchase one of these bad boys around this time of the year and I did...it got here just over an hour ago.
Here are some preliminary data from mine:
Power output of mine measured at a whopping 167mW.
Spectrographic analysis of this laser.
Spectrographic analysis of this laser; spectrometer's response narrowed to a band between 445nm and 455nm to pinpoint wavelength, which is 450.421nm.
This is well within the range of wavelengths for this diode (typically +-10nm if I remember correctly).
So, being advertised as "<5mW" may lead some people to believe that it is safe to use as a cat toy, but the ***MEASURED*** power output of 167mW clearly goes well beyond what would be safe to use as a cat toy. :gun:
I'll be posting a full review of this laser here within the next several days.
Edit 06-22-12: I have posted my full review on this BBS RIGHT HERE