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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: rowdy on Mon, 18 June 2012, 23:19:47
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Greetings all.
I am considering getting a Ducky DK9008, with Cherry MX blue keys and probably red backlighting.
Why red? As I understand it red has the least impact on night vision, so in a darkened room glancing down at the keys and then up will leave the least ghosting on my vision.
Duckys are also available with blue, green and white LED backlighting.
I have read somewhere that extended exposure to blue light might damage the eyes, can anyone comment on that?
What is your preferred backlighting colour, and why?
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I'd get white because you can always color them with a sharpie to change the color. If you want to change the color again, rubbing alcohol and another sharpie color. I've also heard they make LED color changing condoms that fit over the LED in keyboards, but I have never found them :(
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Fitting 108 or so little condoms to the LEDs would be a very fiddly and time-consuming task, and one which probably could not be easily explained to my other half :smile:
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white, more natural, feel calm, easy on the eyes :nerd:
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If you look down at the keys, then at a dark surface (e.g. the wall in a darkened room), do you have after-images of the keys in front of your eyes?
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Purple. Reminds me of the color of my favorite buds.
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I don't use backlighting on my mechanical, but I like the tangerine colour on the function keys of my laptops keyboard.
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Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback.
Not having had a backlit keyboard before either, and nowhere I can go to try one, choice and opinions are interesting.
Ideally I would get one of each colour hehehe. but I don't think my other half would go for that.
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Green, for now.
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Purple, a darker purple if possible. Sadly I've only seen a very small amount of boards to feature it.
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I heard green is a good light for viewing detail and keeping your night vision but I don't even remember where I saw that. I just searched it and it led me to a an old pdf that mentions something similar to what I heard: "Dim green light permits retention of night vision while allowing high visual acuity and gray-tone differentiation of most colors" http://californiamapsociety.org/pdfs/cms-paper-7.pdf I think that is why some camping flashlights have filters or leds that are red and green. The green being used to read things quickly without ruining your night vision. Humans can't really see blue well which is why selective yellow headlights on cars were common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow Not that all this matters but it is pretty interesting to consider when you are in the dark and letters aren't as clear as some other colors you could use.
I happen to like red but only because it matches the rest of my stuff like my case and mouse. Purple would be cool. I kind of dislike backlighting now, it is too bright even with the lowest setting on my keyboard. It really stings my eyes when I look down at it quickly and back at my monitor. I am guessing it could also be the LEDs since they make a kind of focused light. I wonder if putting opaque laser etched keys would still show the lighting? That would make the keys dimmer but I am not sure if the led light would go through keys that aren't made for back-lighting. I am planning to get some later and check if they work on my keyboard. Then I will end up buying a white backlit keyboard and giving it some rainbow keys. Heheh :tongue:
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Purple, a darker purple if possible. Sadly I've only seen a very small amount of boards to feature it.
That would be kinda cool, even if only just as a novelty. In my searches I found a keyboard with yellow (my favourite colour) backlighting, but it was not available locally, otherwise I would have been sorely tempted.
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I heard green is a good light for viewing detail and keeping your night vision but I don't even remember where I saw that. I just searched it and it led me to a an old pdf that mentions something similar to what I heard: "Dim green light permits retention of night vision while allowing high visual acuity and gray-tone differentiation of most colors" http://californiamapsociety.org/pdfs/cms-paper-7.pdf I think that is why some camping flashlights have filters or leds that are red and green. The green being used to read things quickly without ruining your night vision. Humans can't really see blue well which is why selective yellow headlights on cars were common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow Not that all this matters but it is pretty interesting to consider when you are in the dark and letters aren't as clear as some other colors you could use.
I happen to like red but only because it matches the rest of my stuff like my case and mouse. Purple would be cool. I kind of dislike backlighting now, it is too bright even with the lowest setting on my keyboard. It really stings my eyes when I look down at it quickly and back at my monitor. I am guessing it could also be the LEDs since they make a kind of focused light. I wonder if putting opaque laser etched keys would still show the lighting? That would make the keys dimmer but I am not sure if the led light would go through keys that aren't made for back-lighting. I am planning to get some later and check if they work on my keyboard. Then I will end up buying a white backlit keyboard and giving it some rainbow keys. Heheh :tongue:
I had read or heard something like this about red light a while back, maybe suggested by darkrooms almost invariably having red lights, but that probably has more to do with the sensitivity of naked film than night vision.
I ended up getting one with red backlighting, and on the lowest settings it is just fine. The brightest setting is waaay too bright, and I can understand where an earlier comment about backlighting blazing into your eyes came from, but in a way it is kinda cool that it lights up the underneath of my fingers while typing, probably just the novelty factor though.
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Nice! So which one did you end up buying?
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Ducky DK9008, with Cherry MX blue keys and red backlighting.
Why?
Ducky is reasonably well regarded, I haven't really read of any problems with them.
Cherry MX blue because I do mostly typing (emails and programming mostly), and a little bit (~10%) gaming (mostly Minecraft and Portal).
Red backlighting because, well, partly because that was the only Ducky/MX blue that was in stock at the moment hehe, but because I felt most comfortable with the red lighting.
And how is it, he asked himself?
The keys feel different to the old APC-H4100E that I restored, but nice. I don't always bottom out the keys, and that sometimes causes slight typing errors, as one keypress feels different to the next, but that is just me. The keys are all very consistent, although given the choice I would have put a slightly less stiff spring under the space bar.
The red backlighting on the lowest setting easily suffices to identify the keys, and I would kinda liken it to a keyboard with highly contrasting keys/legends (say dark black on light white) under strong lights. With the lights on, the lowest setting just looks like red printing on black keys. The highest brightness is waaay too bright.
And using it on a Mac, the function keys produce F1, F2, F3 etc. - not sure how to invoke Expose, which is usually F3. FN-F3 increases the volume, as per the Ducky key legend, which was surprising. The calculator key (and email, browser and, er, the other one) in the top right corner do not do anything when pressed by themselves (under Windows they start calc.exe, the default email client and so on).
When I have gotten over the novelty of the new keyboard I might explore a bit more how these keys work and whether there is some way of coaxing extra functionality out of them on a Mac.
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If you're going purely off how good they look, here's the order (for Ducky Shines):
#1) Tie between White and Green (never thought I would like the greens but they look amazing)
#2) Red
#3) Blue
#4) Purple (looks just as pink as it does purple)
#5) Yellow
Just like switches it's all a matter of preference, but the above is mine :)
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something else to keep in mind is that the eye is most sensitive to blue light, and that white and blue LEDs are the brightest LEDs per unit current
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Personal preference is one thing, but you have a unique perspective Shaker as you could provide preference according to sales if you wanted to which might prove interesting.
Me, I would go with white as it is totally neutral. I replaced the blue led on my Poker with white even though I put Cherry 2shots on it. All about those subtle details and I really don't like blue as I associate it with tacky gamer sh!t and it's usually too bright. Anything but blue.
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for a while blue LEDs were all the rage because they were the first "bright as all get out" LEDs. now we have superbright whites and insane SMT diodes that can practically blind you and have to be heatsinked. THE FUTURE, IT IS BRIGHT
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True, I should say I like mellow white, I don't want 10,000+ mcd.
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for a while blue LEDs were all the rage because they were the first "bright as all get out" LEDs. now we have superbright whites and insane SMT diodes that can practically blind you and have to be heatsinked. THE FUTURE, IT IS BRIGHT
I don't think I've ever seen dim blue LEDs.
Yikes! Now I have spots in front of my eyes from staring at the LEDs (key caps removed) in my Ducky - the red ones and the couple pf blue ones it also has.
The blue certainly seemed more jarring to the eyes, the red a little more relaxing maybe.