Gels? - Svetaswan

Hi Svetaswan,

In another thread you mentioned some colored gels you put over the screen?
Can you give me a link to this product? I've never heard of this and a
quick search didn't turn up anything.

Thanks,
Karen

Hi Karen - I managed to find the gels via this website:

http://www.northernsound.net/

Just click "Shop By Category" near the top of the page.  Then, under the "Lighting" column - click "Color Filters/Patterns" (2nd option).  A blue section will appear on the left side of the page - within this blue section, click "Filters".  When this is done, different options will appear within this blue section; click "ROSCO Roscolux". This will take you to the page with a varied selection of gels (filters).  

The site sells gels of various colors in 20" by 24" sheets - which you can cut down to your desired size.  This company seemingly sells a varied amount of gels of various colors and hues - all of which block out "blue light" to various degrees.  The color-types that are best for blue-light-blocking purposes are the beiges, yellows (and golden-yellows), ambers, "orangeish" colors.  In selecting a gel, one has to balance the desire to filter out some of the blue-light with the necessity to read/see the screen with ease.  There are gels on that site that are too dark to use as a computer or TV screen filter.  Then there are gels that may block out relatively-little blue-light - but may still be beneficial, since they block out *some* blue light while gently warming up the color temperature (without sacrificing too much in terms of screen brightness).  

Here are the names of some gels that I've bought over the past couple of years - since I thought that they would possibly make adequate blue-light-filters.  I don't think I've had the chance to try out all of them on an extended basis - or perhaps I just quickly gravitated to a few of these.  I think I've used Pale Yellow, Light Relief Yellow, and Canary the most on various screens - but your "favorites" may be very different based on the properties of your screens, and your own preferences.  I think any of these colors are potentially good filters though:

No Color straw

Pale Yellow

Light Relief Yellow

Canary

Light Amber

Deep Straw

Medium Straw

Straw

Light Straw

Bastard Amber

Pale Gold

Roscosun 1/2 CTO

Roscosun 1/4 CTO

Roscosun 1/8 CTO

This is by no means a definitive list - just some colors that I personally picked out. There are several more on the website.  The website even has graphs showing how much light of each wavelength these gels transmit - a very valuable reference.  "Canary" - and colors similar to it - seem to block out the most blue light, while not darkening the overall picture to an unwatchable degree.  I put a "Canary" gel over my old LED TV (which was stolen about 7 weeks ago).  It was definitely effective in cutting down on the blue-light that the TV emitted - maybe a little too effective, I don't know.  And I didn't care that much that it slightly distorted colors - i.e. a blue shirt would look greenish...a pink shirt would look "salmon".  

The biggest downside of these gels is that they may cause more "glare" on your screen - but this can be controlled by, say, not using the computer directly in front of a light source (or by positioning your computer/TV/device "away" from the light source).  And luckily, I have found that I didn't need to attach the gel to the screen with any adhesive; static electricity and the screen's borders usually have done a good job holding these gels into place.  

~Svetaswan

Oh - in the above post, I mentioned that the Northern Sound and Light website had graphs that showed exactly how much light of each wavelength these gels filter out.  Actually, this is incorrect; while you can purchase the gels via the Northern Sound and Light website - it is this website that actually shows the technical filtering information of each colored gel:

http://www.rosco.com/filters/roscolux.cfm

Just click on the icon that looks like a graph that appears beside each color - and a technical data sheet opens up that shows specific light-filtering characteristics of each color.  Since blue light has a wavelength of about 450–495 nm - you can see how well that each gel filters out light in that wavelength range.  

The naming system of the gels appears to be the same across the two sites - for easy comparison purposes.  

Oh - and another thing - I just wanted to clear something up in case someone else encounters these posts and gets the wrong idea.   I haven't used these gels for emf-reduction....as I doubt that these gels are capable of blocking emf.  I use these gels to filter out some of the "blue light" (the wavelength-range of light that the human eye is most sensitive to - too much exposure to blue light can suppress melatonin production and, over time, can damage the retinas) that computer screens and TV screens emit.  Many modern TVs, computers, and devices can emit unnaturally large amounts of blue light - or their color-balance can skew too much toward "blue".  Since I have a long history of being light-sensitive - and I started noticing some eye-strain after prolonged computer use - I started using filters (on an "off and on" basis).  Although filters really don't help decrease emf specifically - from my experience, they can improve your comfort-level while using a computer and improve a computer's overall tolerability.  

~Svetaswan