What
is BlueMax™ lighting?
BlueMax™ lighting products are a collection
of high quality products that produce the highest quality light available today.
The BlueMax™ technology was designed based on extensive research throughout
the various fields of lighting technology, the science of vision, and human physiological
factors. The products are used for general tasks like reading, studying, and more
specific tasks like art work, sewing, making jewelry, crafters, and other hobbies
that require good visual acuity and color detail. BlueMax™ products produce
the highest visual clarity available and are so powerful that they can also be
used as light therapy devices.
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What
is the BlueMax™ light advantage?
BlueMax™ technology is unique in
its ability to make your project work area radiant with a clarity unheard of with
other lamp brands. - Scotopically enhanced spectrum makes it not only much
easier to read, but the words jump off of the page with no eye strain or fatigue.
- Not only is it easier to see, your artwork or sewing material is crisp and
vibrant, just like you were using a magnifying glass, or sitting outside on a
sunny day.
- High CRI of 96 and correlated color temperature of 5900 kelvin
makes objects appear as they are supposed to be seen.
- It is not just better
lighting, it's lighting that makes life better!
Read on and see why 'blue'
light therapy is better! Not all light boxes are made equal.
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How
does BlueMax™ light work?
The BlueMax™ light uses all of the brilliant
qualities of full spectrum light, plus it has two additional phosphors that enhance
the blue colors. Most common fluorescent lights use only one phosphor or color.
Some lights use three colors. BlueMax™ uses a total of five phosphors that not
only utilize the brilliant qualities of sunlight at noon, but we take that blend
and add two additional phosphors. This enhances the scotopic qualities of the
light which make it even more clear than regular full spectrum light without the
UV. Higher CRI and kelvin temp using balanced multiple phosphors give this light
superior clarity. Scotopically enhanced light has been proven to stimulate the
eyes photoreceptors increasing visual acuity making this light more comfortable
to use while lowering melatonin levels that directly affect energy levels in the
body.
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Why
is Scotopically Enhanced 'Blue' Light Therapy important for Seasonal Affective
Disorder?
In the human eye there are two well-known types of photoreceptors
called rods and cones. Until recently, these two receptors were commonly over
simplified by saying that the cones are responsible for day vision and the rods
responsible for night vision. Nothing could be farther from the truth, however,
and some recent efforts by two scientists with differing scientific backgrounds
demonstrate unequivocally the important role that the oft overlooked rods have
in vision at typical indoor lighting levels. A series of experiments by Dr. Sam
Berman and Dr. Don Jewett over the past decade sponsored by the U.S. Department
of Energy have highlighted the role that rods play in interior lighting conditions.
The tests took place in realistic workplace environments with typical interior
lighting and task conditions. These experiments showed that vision acuity can
be improved if interior lighting takes into account the role of the rods while
performing tasks.
Dr. Berman
is a physicist, senior scientist emeritus, and former head of the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory lighting group. Dr. Jewett is a neurophysiologist and professor emeritus
at the University of California Medical Center. In their initial experiments conducted
in the mid-1990s they showed that it is the rods that primarily control the pupil
diameter of the eye. In subsequent experiments, they found that pupil size, as
controlled by the light spectrum in a room rather than the light level, was a
factor in visual sharpness under interior lighting. In the seminal study, the
pupil sizes of 17 adult subjects were determined as they sat in a chair watching
a small television. The subjects were then exposed to various room lighting by
altering spectrum, intensity, and wall coloring. Pupil sizes and changes were
then measured remotely using thousands of data points for each subject. A near
perfect correlation was found based on the relative sensitivity of the rods to
different wavelengths (color) of light with the rods being most sensitive to the
blue light spectrum. This sensitivity of the rods to blue light is also known
as the scotopic response. It is one of issues we have considered in providing
'blue' light therapy.
Because
pupil size follows the scotopic response of the rods to blue light this results
in important practical applications for indoor task lighting. Pupil size plays
a very important role in human vision, as the smaller the pupil size the better
the acuity, the greater the depth of field, and the less the eye has to adjust
in order to focus in on a particular object (accommodative response in medical
terms). It is common to see the importance of pupil size in practice by individuals
through the squinting of the eyes in order to bring distant objects in to focus
by manually reducing the size of the pupil. Another illustration of this can be
seen by looking at an out of focus object through a small hole in a piece of paper
which will bring it into focus. At typical indoor lighting levels, smaller pupil
size will permit for better vision. Many assume that by simply increasing light
levels you can get a smaller pupil size, but this practice fails to utilize the
response of the rods that actually controls the pupil size. Simply ramping up
light levels in an attempt to improve vision with normal interior lighting only
adds glare reducing visual acuity and wasting energy. The knowledge of both the
photopic and scotopic components of vision is necessary to provide an optimal
lighting product and that is exactly what the BlueMax technology has done by scotopically
enhancing the light output of our lamps. This type of blue
light therapy no only provides for seasonal affective disorder treatment,
but it also provides optimal task lighting.
When lighting is provided for tasks such as computer work, sewing, or reading
environments the effects of poor scotopic lighting become even more evident. Bright
task lighting, using the common lamps on the market only serves to produce glare
and a desaturation of colors. To combat this drowning out of colors and glare
it is common for users to decrease or completely remove the surrounding illumination
causing the pupils to become larger resulting in poorer vision and visual fatigue
due to the additional focus (accomodative response) required by the eyes when
the pupils are larger. With proper lighting a person should be able to read, work
on the computer, or do detailed crafting work for many hours without any of the
eye fatigue, dryness, or soreness that is the typical result of poor scotopic
lighting. For task lighting such as this, the lighting needs to be judged purely
on the basis of its scotopic qualities that result in the smallest pupils with
the least amount of glare and that is exactly what BlueMax™ lighting has done...created
the perfect scotopic lighting source for task lighting. By providing blue
light therapy light boxes and other products, BlueMax technology can help
with seasonal affective disorder and provide the perfect task lighting.
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What is CRI to a lay person?
CRI is very similar to your contrast knob
on your TV set. High CRI equates to sharper, crisper, more natural colored pictures
while at the same time reducing glare.
Tech definition: A measurement of the
amount of color shift that objects undergo when lighted by a light source as compared
with the color of those same objects when seen under a reference light source
of comparable color temperature. CRI values generally range from 0(worst) to 100(best).
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What is Kelvin or Color Temperature of light?
This is simply the mixture
of colors that is displayed. You can also equate this to the color knobs of a
TV set. As you adjust these colors, the objects look either more yellow/red and
or more blue/green. The research that has been been discussed above proves that
colors that operate with enhanced blue lighting/scotopic qualities will look more
vibrant and clear.
Tech definition: A measure of the color of a light source
relative to a black body at a particular temperature expressed in degrees Kelvin
(K). Incandescent lights have a low color temperature (approximately 2800K) and
have a red-yellowish tone; daylight has a high color temperature (approximately
6000K) and appears bluish (the most popular fluorescent light, Cool White, ia
rated at 4100K). Today, the phosphors used in fluorescent lamps can be blended
to provide any desired color temperature in the range from 2800K to 6000K.
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