Whole Layout Lighting Choices and Temperatures

[ljudice]

Just an attempt to get your current thoughts on this subject:

   - good ideas for "green" lighting (and no snark on why would you want green lights!)
   - best color temps to highlight models


- Lou

[C855B]

Ha! You were serious. As you know, I've blathered on at length in my layout engineering thread about lighting. Since I have the luxury of starting from scratch, I get to constantly fret over my interpretation of "ideal".

As to high efficiency, I cannot say enough about LEDs. In the past year there have been tremendous strides in both color temperature choices, brightness and end-user costs. I am very impressed by the recent OSRAM/Sylvania E27 bulbs. They don't have a weird shape or a yellow-tinted globe, there is no turn-on delay, and in a fixture you simply cannot tell it is an LED. They are available in 2700K and 5000K temperatures, with a 60W equivalent running about $10, actual power consumption rated at 8.5W. GE has been stepping into the arena with low-cost/high-quality LEDs, but other than the GE/Quirky "Link" bulb I am testing right now, I don't have a good handle on what they're offering. Phillips, who has dominated the LED consumer market for the past two years, is falling way behind on price/performance.

I don't use CFLs any more. I have a box full of them, and they are going away to good homes. While really cheap, quality is all over the map, they NEVER last as long as they say they will, and the cold start problems in ambients under 70°F are severe with some brands. I've got a string of work lights in my layout space that take 5-10 minutes to come to full brightness @ 60°. This is very annoying.

For florescent tubes, the consumer (big box) market isn't there yet. You have to go online for T-8 equivalent LEDs. There is a reason - up until very recently, it was necessary to modify the light fixture, bypassing the ballast. OK for inveterate D-I-Yers like me, but a total no-go for John Q. Public. Price is still a problem because of the lack of mass-market, but the online suppliers (the ones with honest brightness ratings) are now at $20/tube for 32W four-foot equivalents. LED driver start-up delays are still an issue, though improving - the latest batch I bought is only about a half-second between flipping the switch and the lights coming on.

As mentioned in the UP yellow thread, I prefer ambient lighting with color temps around 3000K. That's roughly incandescent yellowish. I find office lighting (florescents @~4000K) fatiguing, and don't talk to me about 5000K, a/k/a "daylight". But this is purely a personal preference, definitely a YMMV issue; certainly not be the next person's "ideal" for highlighting models.

[C855B]

I forgot to mention... for the undecided, there are variable color temperature E27 LEDs on the market now. Not cheap, and they require a special network controller. Lowe's was carrying these for a while, but I haven't seen them lately (Lowe's is retrenching and vastly reducing product selections... another discussion).

[ljudice]

Thanks, Mike...   I definitely want to go with LED's, it seems the best course is to try a couple of color temps and then find a workable system to fit them into...

[peteski]

I'm pretty sure that I saw a very similar thread here in the past.  But was it in the Layout Design or in the Electronics forums?  Hmmmm....

[PAL_Houston]

Personally, I like LED's with 5000K color temperature, because it seems most like daylight to me.

Here are some additional comments from my installation:

I chose LED's for a couple of reasons:  first, they use and dissipate a lot less energy, which translates to a cooler room and lower energy (light and A/C) bills; second, I could get 5000 K color temperature, which better approximates daylight;  third, they are supposed to last forever (30,000 hours).  The big disadvantage is they are expensive.  On the other hand the difference between LEDs and the same number of lumens in incandescent lights was enough that I did not need to run a completely new (additional) circuit.  Looked at this way, the LEDs saved me about 1500 smackers, even before the additional enerygy savings I will be getting.  I got LED lights at the local big box, along with the light tracks and connection hardware.  A friend & I installed the tracks in less than 2 hours after the wiring was completed, including cutting some of the tracks to fit.

[robert3985]

I'm sold on 5000K color temp which approximates mid-morning and mid-afternoon daylight (not noon daylight).  Since I do a lot of layout, product and model train documentation with my DSLR, 5000K color temp lights (ONLY) in the train room really keeps "weird" shadow colorations and highlights non-existent.

Even though your eyes may prefer a different color temp for your layout, your models, matching paint, photography etc....for me, my eyeballs naturally like this color temp, and calibrating the white balance in my DSLR with this color temp is easy as pie.  So, my preference is based on both what I like, and what works best for photography.

However, I do NOT like 5000K for "living" and my lights in all the rest of my living space are warmer. What this means is that it takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the bluish color temp of my layout room's lights when I walk in after the sun's gone down and I've been under warmer lights in the rest of the house.  I don't view that as a problem, as my eyeballs go through the same routine during the day when I simply go outside.