Quote Originally Posted by Powernoob
I'm glad to see that you mentioned the inverse square law as this is indeed the law that governs the decrease in intensity of EM radiation such as light. This includes light from HPS and from CFL. As per the poster above you, there seems to be a strange view going around that photons from CFLs are somehow weedier and less well-travelled than identical photons from HPS. I'd like to see the evidence for the view that light intensity drops off quicker for CFL than HPS as this would have to mean that one of them was violating the inverse square law.

Anyways, you're probably having more success because you're using good quality name branded CFLs which actually produce the amount of light they're supposed to. I was thinking maybe a lot of people made the same mistake as me and bought from one of the many cheaper grow light makers which, it now seems, produce far less light than they are supposed to.

Maybe CFL is getting a bad name because of this - a lot of people seem to be against it or say it is for 'noobs' or whatever. But I've a feeling that if you get good quality CFLs it should be as good as any other source.
Here is the thing a lot of this stuff put out by HID companies is a myth and marketing to protect their own vested interest at the end of the day once you know the science then you come to realise that certain things do not add up, as far as I am aware a photon is a photon, different wavelength photons have different amounts of energy, shorter blue wavelength photons have more energy than longer wavelength photons if my memory is correct.

So HID lamps are only supposedly better because they are belting out more photons than the CFLs not that their photons are stronger than CFLs because that is not the case, but that is not the whole story as a good percentage of what HIDs are belting out is not usable light ( it is delivering large amounts of a spectrum that is only absorbed in small amounts by the plants).

Now these HIDs deliver lets say in old money terms 95000 lumens for a 600w Hps @ its source, but a plant cannot sit that close to the light so if you move the light 1 foot away now its lumen count has dropped to 23750 lumens, move the light 2feet away and from the plant and the story gets worse for HIDs those lumen figures now drop to 10555 lumens.

So you have a light that runs hot delivers large portions of its light in a spectrum that is not really catering to the plant and has a lowish light output when hung at a usable growing distance, well when you do the maths and compare that watt for watt to an array of flourescent tubes that can be hung at source to each plant, that give off a more usable spectrum of light for plant growth and that can distribute that light equally over a growing area, produces way less heat and consumes less on the electricity it becomes a no brainer as to why I chose this route what I fail to understand is why so few have cottoned onto this I can only put it down to being set in their ways and falling for the marketing hype and brightness of HIDs, but that is a human eye response to their brightness, to a plant those lights would look adequate but kind of dullish and nowhere near as bright as we perceive them.