Brightest laser?

As a whole, you got it right! The green is the brightest despite having 10-100x less power. The red is the second brightest (and would be brightest if it had been a common 650 nm red). Here is their ranking by light output: 1. Green 50 mW, 30 lumens 2. Red 500 mW, 22.8 lumens 3. Blue 500 mW, 19.6 lumens 4. Violet 5,000 mW, 17 lumens Before making the video I did not realize that a monster 5000 mW bluray laser would only be around half as bright as a simple 50 mW green laser pointer... Though, in many situations I believe the dot from the bluray laser would appear brighter, since 405 nm laser light is very good at making things fluoresce.

True. Under low light (scotopic vision) the eye's color sensitivity changes a bit. But visible lasers are so bright, that we see them with the photopic vision. Unless you are watching the laser from very far away... Assume you are close to the lasers and use the photopic vision when answering :)

Yes, 589 nm and 593.5 nm lasers are the most 'common' in the yellow-orange range. But they are still rare, because they are very inefficient and unreliable if not carefully temperature controlled. So you will pay a lot of dollars for a weak yellow-orange laser. The Laserglow Rigel for example is a max 5 mW 589 nm laser costing $689... I hope to get some yellow laser at some point though.

btw, there is also an effect that blue appears brighter to the human eye when it is dark, so can you maybe specify if this is in dark or light conditions?

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your thought proces. So far it looks like no one has trust in the half a watt blue laser. I am surprised it is that one, no one has chosen. Let's see how it ends up :)

Hehe, yes. It is very common in Denmark to use energy drinks to get more done in a day. But I am not a fan of it. They may work temporarily but I always crash and burn after the effect wears off x)

How about a orange laser, or yellow. Do they make anything that color ?

I'm going to go with green, as I know that's the peak of the human eye's sensitivity, but I really don't know if the roll-off is going to be enough for the more powerful other wavelengths to win. Or maybe it all levels out equal... Actually, looking at the distribution of strengths... I'm going the change my vote to equal!

TechieSteve

You can bypass it with dru... *ahem* i meant Coffee, lots of it.