Just for the cat luffers

[orchid-man]

A Laelia perinii
and they say cats like quite abit of light.This was grown under 70% shade and it has a flower width of 120mm

[Piper]

Very pretty, Orchid-man! She seems happy. Good growing!

Julie

[Ania]

Very nice cat orchid-man!

Now I noticed you are being specific about your conditions and have a question: how do you determine your light intensity? I need somebody to explain it to me like to five-year-old with short attention span.
So far I have been using just the common sense indicators like leaves turning purple, sun burn, hot leaves etc. It would be nice to actually now how the % of shade and ftcandles in my plant room.

Ania

[Ferrari]

If you don't have a greenhouse ( no shade cloth with a known %).
The best way is to measure intensity with a footcandle lightmeter, but if you don't have one handy...
Your can measure using a camera with a built-in light meter. ( any regular SLR) Set the film speed at ASA 25 and shutter speed at 1/60th of a second. Aim camera at a flat sheet of MATTE, white paper. Adjust F-stop until correct exposure. then convert
F-Stop Footcandles
f/2.8 200
f/4 370
f/5.6 750
f/8 1500
f/11 2800
f16 5000
(not 100% accurate converion but very close)

[orchid-man]

Being an electrician I bought myself a meter that reads the light levels in either footcandles or lux from the local electronic store . Footcandles are now longer the international unit.
The shading that I am using is a manufactured plastic cloth that stops light ,suposidly without affecting color.

As a rule I can place my hand about 12 inches above the plant on a cloudless day and just get a weak shadow.

Hows this for a growing summary,as told to me by a commercial grower last November,
Grow them WARM and SHADY,even the odonts

[Diane]

A beautiful Catt!

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Lovely!
Cheers. Hoa.

[bench72]

lovely Laelia!!! I find the shape of this is particularly attractive!

[clintdawley]

One of my favorite species and your looks very healthy and vibrant.

70% shade is still 3,000 FC on a bright, cloudless day (which is the upper range of Laelia light requirements).

[Piper]

Ferrari,

Even with a light meter, there's no exact science to it. A light meter, or a camera meter, or the hand/shadow test, will only tell you how much light you have at that moment.

If you wanted to get scientific, you'd need to measure the light levels each hour of the day to see how much light your plants are getting in total. But who can bother with that? Then figure in weather differences (how many cloudy versus sunny days you have), and seasonal differences (ie, lower, weaker light in winter - taking into account high reflected light whent snow covers the ground, and burning stronger light in the summer.) And who has time for that!

Use a light meter only as a rough guideline, and consider each of our relative light levels before taking our advice. (I can grow most of my plants in nearly full light, because New England sunlight is wimpy. You'd cook them fast in southern climes like that!) I also recently realized as I spout light advice, that I should mention my windows have screens (regular screens - not shading devices) on them. They definitely block some light. So consider that as well! Your method is still the best definitive test!

Julie