Beware the lume! Or Does it really glow like a torch?

[panerai153]

Sort of a little fun thing, mostly for the noobs here who might not be aware of all the "tricks of the trade" When it comes to photographing watches especially regarding lume shots.

I just put together a ROO Chrono ( See, that's a lie already)!!, I just changed out the bezel and gaskets, but it was the first attempt to do anything other than change straps, bracelets and occasionally remove the case back to check the movement or grease the gasket.

 

Here is the setup. If you have a decent camera that has the capabilities of changing apertures/shutter speeds, it's possible to do a lot of in camera manipulation of photos. What I'm trying to show here is it's possible to make the lume on a watch a lot better than it really is, by manipulating the exposures. First off, if the watch has really poor lume, nothing is going to make it look really good, but if it's got decent lume, WOW, you can make it look like it would light up the night.

 

Some folks don't give a whit about lume, if it's there, OK, if not still OK. But to others, me included, it's pretty important. I'm a lume junky, the more the better!! However, one thing that we all need to realize is most reps from the factory have pretty poor lume. The newer ones are better, but they are still for the most part not up to par with their genuine counterparts. So because of that, a lot of us spend a lot of time and money having someone redo the lume to make it better.

 

So you're looking at a watch on the sales forum, everything looks really nice, price is OK, watch runs, keeps reasonable time, and from the photos, it looks like you could use it as a bedside reading light. But, is it really that good? my feelings are, if the lume was applied by one of the better modders on this and other forums, it ought to be pretty good, but it may or may not be as good as it looks, because with lume, like women, sometimes looks can be deceiving!! 

 

This afternoon, raining outside, on call, so really can't do anything much. Since I recently finished my new ROO project, I decided to take some photos. This watch has a long checkered past, which I'll save for another story, but one thing that should be revealed, it has had the lume renewed by VAC. This was done before I got the watch, so  I have to take the word of the seller, but he's a good guy and I have no reason to doubt him. Here is the setup

Interfit 24" collapsible light tent

Canon 70D Camera / Canon 28-135 Lens

Heavy Gitzo Tripod

The lume was exposed to pretty bright lights around the light ten, as I took a dozen or so photos of the watch before I took the lume shots. I would say it was well exposed to bright lights and the lume was probably close to maximum.

 

So what I did was take several photos at about 30 second intervals, each time I increased the exposure by 2 seconds. starting at 3 seconds and ending at 13 seconds. The last shot was at 15 seconds and a little room light through a slightly opened door. I used the self timer to decrease shake as these are pretty long exposures and impossible without a good tripod and no movement. So what we have here is a and example of how lume can be manipulated, as the times were getting longer and the lume was "appearing" to get brighter, which is the opposite of what you would expect because as time goes forward, the lume should dim, rather than appear brighter.

 

Here are the photos, starting with the shortest exposure first and ending with the longest exposure

[cc33]

Great insight

I've always wondered about that

Thanks!

[droptopman]

Very interesting information here. Thanks for posting it. I often wondered why my lume did not glow like some of the pics I see--even the pieces that were relumed by a pro......

Sent from my droptop using telepathy.

[kernow]

The only way I 'believe' lume shots is when there is another, ie gen watch alongside to compare it too. Even then it's possible to charge the rep's lume and not the gens, and then increase exposure time so that they both look similar.

[Nightwatch]

Well done and said. It still is a pleasure to look at some great lume.shots. Normally I keep it at 2 or max 3 secs just to be able to compare them myself.

The real-life test is when I´m still able to read the time, with some ease, in a dark room after 7 hours. The "superlumed" Rolex´s and PAMs perform quite well.