Luminance Converter
A specialized tool to convert between luminance units like Candela per square metre (nits), Stilbs, and Lamberts.
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About this tool
Convert luminance, how bright a surface appears, between four units: lambert (L), foot-lambert (fL), candela per square meter (nit) and stilb (sb). The base unit is the candela per square meter, also called the nit and used for screen brightness. The factors are 3,183.1 for the lambert, 3.42626 for the foot-lambert and 10,000 for the stilb. Foot-lamberts are still used for cinema screen brightness (the standard is around 14 fL), while lamberts and stilbs are mostly historical. The result is labeled with the symbol (nit for candela per square meter) and shows up to 8 decimals.
How to use it
- Type the value to convert.
- Choose the From and To units.
- Read the result, which updates as you type.
- Use Swap to reverse the units or Copy to copy the result.
Example
1 lambert to foot-lambert
929.03048805 fL
Common problems
- Results look very small
- Converting foot-lamberts to lamberts gives numbers like 0.00107639, which is correct because the lambert is much larger.
- Where is cd/m²?
- It is the unit labeled Candela/m² (nit) in the menu, and results in it are labeled nit.