> True, the"reflector" was rather crinkled foil, but I decided when I
noticed the
>effect I could do without the extra "speed," especially since times were
>already very short.
Just thought I'd put in another tip. Back in the late 60's I used to work
for a company called Spectrolab and our primary product was solar
simulators, that is million dollar gizmos were used to test space vehicles
in vacuum chambers, the solar simulator's light was to energize the solar
panels and heat the vehicles, etc. I was a technician so I've had some
experience in this area.
One of the things I learned was that aluminum is not very reflective, and is
in fact a fairly dark metal, silver is worse. Your best reflectivity is off
of a flat white panel. We used a block of magnesium carbonate as a
reflecctivity standard to calibrate spectrometers. I think this is the same
stuff that athletes use to rub on there hands before doing high bar things.
It's not practical to line your light bank with magnesium carbonate though.
The moral of this story is paint the inside of your light bank flat white,
the whitest you can get, most whites that are used for custom mixed colors
are good. If my memory serves me, we used Glidden 5400. Another added
advantage is that you can build the frame out of plywood and not have a lot
of metal around the flying about electrons. Foil can be particularly dangerous.
Thanks for letting my jump in Judy.
Dick S.
Bostick & Sullivan
1541 Center Dr.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
87505