Let's talk LED layout lighting

[Dave Schneider]

I am getting to the benchwork building stage and my plan is for a shadow-box type arrangement with an upper lighting valance. At one point I thought that T-8 fluorescent tubes were the way to go, but now I am considering LED strip lights.  One primary advantage I see is their light weight, which allows for less robust valance construction (like maybe foam core instead of masonite/wood).

In searching for LED strips, I notice a wide variation in prices from the $20 range to $100+.
I think what I want is something like this, a lexible strip that can be cut to different lengths: http://tinyurl.com/8d5nc53
Or do I need to go to "high power" LED strips?

There are so many different kinds now it is hard to figure out what is needed.

Thoughts? Vendors? Model Numbers?

Best wishes, Dave

[Chris333]

Only thing I can add is that light is measured in lumens.

And you probably need the really expensive LED lights to be happy.

[C855B]

OMG, LED lighting is so dynamic right now. At the moment it's one of those things that anything you do will be obsoleted tomorrow, at half the price you paid yesterday. 

As far as the LED strips, yes, you'll need high brightness, although I recommend a dimmer/controller. My concern about the eBay lights you're shopping is whether they will be available tomorrow. Seriously, the Chinese suppliers for this stuff come and go like crazy, and getting brightness and color consistency between orders is nigh impossible. Super Bright LEDS is going to be more expensive than the eBay discounters, but their business plan is apparently to lock-down suppliers so they can catalog consistent, higher-quality product.

I am going 100% LED for the Gibbon, Cozad and Western... in fact, for the whole building. I'm not planning valance-style illumination; the current plan for scene illumination is track lights with GU16 gimbal fixtures (the small, normally halogen reflector, 110V type) using 40 or 50W-equivalent dimmable LEDs. Believe me, I've shopped the zillions of online LED stores, but the best I've found so far is the Philips GU16 at Home Depot. There are a lot on the market right now which are not dimmable. I do have samples of LED spot/floodlights that look like traditional consumer PAR30 and 38 bulbs. These are impressive for brightness and color, and reasonably-priced. http://www.wholesaleled.com

Room lighting will be a combination of LED "can" lights and track lights. I found a can-style downlight at Home Depot which looks really, really good in my tests.

For "mood" lighting I am reaching into the stage lighting catalogs for LED "wash" light bars and PAR can spots. These aren't cheap, but are getting better. The advantage with these is the integrated DMX512 control bus, which means that a relatively inexpensive ($75-150) stage lighting controller can be used to control all the room and display lighting, even via computer. Non-stage system lights like the track lights and downlights can be controlled through "dimmer packs", cheap (~$60) clusters of DMX512-controlled dimmers that you plug regular lights into.

[John]

I am going to wait a while on LEDs .. I don't want the lighting to cost more than the layout ..

[Dave Schneider]

Mike,

Thanks for the info. Very helpful. Any thoughts on whether this item is too good to be true (other than not shipping to Alaska!):
http://tinyurl.com/98hetxo

It is much less expensive than this one from Superbright:
http://tinyurl.com/9rmszo5

I have no feel for the different LED types.

Best wishes, Dave

[DKS]

Those LED strips are not powerful enough to illuminate an entire layout on their own from ceiling height; you'd need several strips in parallel to build up the brightness to an acceptable level, by which time you've spent a fortune. Plus they do not have consistent color temperature. You are much better off looking at "proper" LED fixtures. My pick would be resessed units. They are seriosuly bright, have a good color profile (very close to tungsten), and can be dimmed smoothly without flickering. I use them to illuminate my office/workshop, and would use them for a permanet layout in a heartbeat, if I started one tomorrow.

Those flexible strips are great, however, for lighting your backdrop. Leave a gap between the layout and the sky board, and run strips along the bottom of the gap. Use colors for different effects, like orange/red for sunset, blue for twilight, or spend a little more on RGB strips which will generate any color you want. By the way, I have purchased those LED strips for as little as $30 for the 16-foot 300-LED version on eBay. Run searches and sort by price--you will be amazed by the range.

I am going to wait a while on LEDs .. I don't want the lighting to cost more than the layout ..

Don't wait too long, because they save enough energy to pay for themselves in a few years. Plus, those recessed units are getting very cost-effective.

[GaryHinshaw]

I'm no expert on LED lighting so won't be able to add much here, but I would reiterate that the two main lighting factors you should consider are 1. overall brightness (lumens) and 2. spectrum (effective temperature).

To put this in context, I am using T8 fluorescents that have a brightness of ~2800 lumens per 4ft bulb and (in my case) a color temperature of 5000 K, which Philips calls daylight.  I have 10 2-bulb fixtures in a 10x20 garage for a total of 56,000 lumens (from 640 watts of power).  As ambient light goes, it's quite bright, but I find that when I'm looking at a train on the layout, it could still stand to be brighter, so it's not too much.   (The figure you really care about is lumens/m^2 falling on your layout, but for linear lighting, and in the absence of too many dark surfaces, the light is fairly uniformly distributed).  I really like the 5000 K color temperature, but some find it too harsh.  Spectrum is a pretty subjective preference, so you'll just have to try a few types out to see what you like.

For comparison, the strips you link to are ~800 lumens/m, which as DKS points out, is rather dim.  I think you'd want about 60-70 meters of these to get the same light output I'm getting (unless you really focus on lighting the layout and not the room).  At $100/20 m, that's not crazy, but you'd have to think about where you'd put it.  If your trailer is ~10 x 20 ft, and you have 200 ft of light strips, you'd have 10 strips running the long length of the room, one per foot.  Only you can decide if you like the spectrum.

Hope this helps,
Gary

[C855B]

Oh... almost missed it... the eBay listing is for four reels of the stuff, not one. Wow. That is cheap. Plus, the eBay reel is rated 4X the brightness, 800 lumens/meter, versus 200 lm/m (calculated) for the Super Bright reel. Super Bright really needs to get with the program on pricing; they were pioneers but seem to be resting on their laurels the past year or so.

800 lumens is very roughly equivalent to a 50-60W incandescent. So each reel of the eBay tape would in theory replace five 60W bulbs. It looks like a deal to me. The only caveat I can offer is firsthand experience with some Chinese eBay'ers overstating specs. It's an easy trap because of generations of equating watts with brightness, now we have to learn a whole new system.

David is right, the strips probably won't work for room lighting, but I think they would be more than fine for valance lighting.

"Warm White" is somewhat standard nomenclature for a color temperature of 3000° Kelvin (3000K), for a yellowish white pretty darn close to a conventional halogen bulb. That is usually my choice, and is where most consumer-grade LED replacement bulbs are going. You'll notice that the Super Bright "whites" are available in three color temps, 3000K, 4500K and 9000K. 9000K is almost blue, and IMO is that annoying white-but-not-really of the early "white" LEDs that now seem to be called "pure white". 4500K is called "daylight", probably because the white is very close to the "daylight" florescent tube color (as Gary mentioned), or only slightly bluish.

As Gary alluded, I'm one of those who find 5000K too harsh, and it is a subject of debate between my wife and I for the studio/layout building. Being an artist and experienced in the printing trade, she gravitates towards the 5000K as being the accepted "neutral" within the industry for color balance. Since I'm the family electrician, guess who wins this one? 

If you are planning a lot of photography, you still might want some 4500-5000K in the mix. The 3000K alone will make photos appear yellowish, although these days you can certainly correct that in post-processing.

[Chris333]

Might find something helpful here:
www.4dpnr.org/articles/Layout_Room_Lighting.pdf

[Dave Schneider]

Thanks everyone. This is quite a bit of information to digest, but I really appreciate the input. That was a great resource Chris.

As for my situation for those who are interested, I have a 10x20 layout space. I currently have four 2-tube T-12 (?) ceiling fixtures that provide adequate illumination for the room. What I pondering is how to illuminate just the layout space. The distance between the lights and the layout surface will be relatively modest, something like 15 to 18 inches, and the depth of the scene will be about 2 ft, and I have about 50 ft of run. While the LEDs can be expensive, a run of 4 ft fluorescent tubes aren't cheap either. Time for some calculations.

Suggestions still welcome!
Best wishes, Dave

[robert3985]

Dave,

As per several comments about color temperature, my cohort and fellow take-the-modules-to-the-show crazy Gregg Cudworth and myself put our heads together to standardize the color temperature of our modular lighting, and decided on 5000K.

I got a terrific deal on 5000K 25W (100W incandescent equivalents) Compact Fluorescents at The Home Depot and decided to try them out.  At first I was put off by their "harshness", which translated means they were noticeably much more blue than the other bulbs in my layout room.  I decided to change out all of the bulbs to be consistent, and as my eyes became used to the color, things started looking "right" to me.

Being an artist and photographer, and very conscious about light temperature in digital photography as it relates to digitizing my artwork, I decided to take some test shots of my "daylight" lit layout, and the results were fabulous. I was no longer messing around with manually adjusting my white balance, trying to get the "right" balance between several different color temperatures in use lighting up my layout room.

Since my layout is portable and I attend several shows per year with it, the new "daylight" module lighting attracts a lot of positive comments from onlookers, and when I'm set up in an arena with large windows, it is pretty amazing to compare the quality of light coming through the windows as nearly equal to the 5000K lights over my modules!

I still have warm incandescents in my living room, bedroom, den, etc., but now I light my workshop with 5000K lighting as well as my layout room.  I really like the fact that what I build and paint on my bench looks the same on my layout now.

My suggestion is, no matter what style of light emitter you decide to go with, go with 5,000K for your daylight color temp. If I had lighting valences over my layout instead of drafting lamps, I'd go with 25W 5,000K CF fixtures every two to three feet 14" above your track, with the inside of the valence painted with the equivalent of Titanium White, or gluing crinkled aluminum foil on the inside of the valence to reflect and disperse the light.

By the way, my layout room is 11' X 25'...about the same size as yours.

Here's a photo of our modules set up at the Evanston Roundhouse Festival at the beginning of August of this year.  Notice the color of the outside light coming through the open service door, the color of the layout lighting, and the yellow color of the overhead lights.  This graphically shows how true 5,000K lights are to actual daylight.

[DKS]

More important than the color temperature you choose is consistency. My recommendation would be to choose a color, and then change out the lighting for the entire space to match (as well as provide the ability to completely block any windows). This means no matter where or how you photograph your layout, you won't have to work very hard--if at all--to achieve correct white balance.

One concern I have with "daylight" temerature lighting is the UV component. If you use fluorescent lamps, be sure to get UV filters for them to minimize fade damage to the layout. Personally, I like the warmth of the tungsten temperature range, as it simulates the "sweet light" of late afternoon, which I also find easier on the eyes. The thing I find remarkable about some of the better warm white LED lamps is how close to tungsten they fall in temperature; I've been able to set my camera to the factory tungsten setting, with no need to tweak the resulting images any further.

I'm not overly fond of compact fluorescent lighting. For one thing, I've found too often the lamp life to be shorter than what's claimed. They also have a warm-up period, during which their brightness changes considerably, and their color temperature shifts somewhat, which forces you to wait until they're all at full operating temperature before you can do any critical photography. Plus they're often fussy about being dimmed; even those advertised as dimmable often flicker when dimmed, or dim a token amount before shutting off. Consequently I've replaced all of the CF lamps in my home with LED fixtures.

[robert3985]

Like DKS, I am not overly fond of CFL's either.  They have their shortcomings, but...they also have their advantages and after weighing both the advantages and disadvantages, several of my N-scale modular associates (and me) have chosen them.

As per DKS's comments about their shortcomings, it is true that they take a while to "warm up" to their proper operating temperature and become consistent (at least to my eye).  However, it's not hours, but from 1 to 3 minutes...so I'm usually turning on the DCC, or putting things on the track or composing my photo while that's going on.  I don't find it to be an inconvenience.

I was not aware of any UV problems with the 5,000K lights, as they are not listed as "grow" lights.  They do emit a small amount of UV light (all of them, no matter what color temperature) unless they are "double glass" CFL's, then the problem goes away with the second layer of glass acting as a UV filter.  I will be replacing mine with double glass CFL's.

I am however, aware of the UV problems with quartz-halogen lights (that's why they have thick UV filters on the lamps).

Since I do not dim my lights for night effects (as DKS does) dimming is not something I take into account and I have had no experience with dimmable CFL's.

CFL's, if they are turned on and off a lot, do not last nearly as long as advertised.  However, in the two years I've had my CFL's in use on my layout, I have yet to have one cease to function.  Maybe that's because when I turn them on, I am usually going to work on the layout for several hours.

Since my modules are portable, an important quality of CFL's is their low power consumption (approximately 1/4 that of incandescents).  Used to be that the big extension cords would get warm when all the 100W lights on the club modular layout were turned on.  Now, they stay nice and room temperature.

Another quality that is important for portable layouts is that CFL's will take rough handling (meaning jiggling during transportation) better than will incandescent bulbs.  Sometimes in the past, I've had two or three incandescents "die" during transportation to a show...that's why I'd always carry extras with me.  However, I have not had similar problems in the past two years with my CFL's.

Although I would prefer LED's, their cost vs light output is prohibitive for me.  I get a lot of lumens for my buck with CFL's.


As to color temp, it's a matter of personal taste.  However, the "golden moment" photographers love so much (myself included) does not only involve the warming of the color temp of sunlight as it filters through the atmosphere,  but importantly, also the angle of the light source.  A very vertical position of "golden" light looks odd to me...like sunlight at noon filtering through clouds of smoke generated by a nearby wildfire.

To my eye, evening lighting also involves long shadows such as those in this photo, taken a long time ago using Fujichrome Velvia, a Nikon F2 with a 60mm Nikkor Micro lens with quartz-halogen lamps providing the warm, angled light, and me "painting" the skyboards with a 5,000K flood during the long exposure...because, even in the evening, the sky stays blue, even though the clouds may "warm up".


The printing industry standard for evaluating and judging color is 5000K (daylight), and "light booths" are commonly in use throughout the printing industry to properly judge both the consistency and quality of prints coming out of the presses.  Since I was involved in the printing industry for 18 years (part owner of a press) my experience, of course, leads me to prefer 5,000K lights.

As a long-time pro photographer, my recent experience with being able to fiddle with the white balance of my digital photos, either post-camera (using Photoshop) or in-camera (using camera controls) without having to screw on a warming or cooling filter,  has told me that if I want warmer lighting for my photos, I can easily manipulate the quality of color in my photos by simply setting my white balance to either "shade" or "cloudy" which will warm things up considerably.  However, I usually prefer to do my processing post-camera on my calibrated monitor using Photoshop, masking, cloning and generally having fun with my photos.  I have found that if the quality of light is poor, which usually means different color temperatures of light illuminating a scene (incandescents, fluorescents, halogens, the window...all at the same time), the quality of color in my photos is not "complete" (meaning the full spectrum of color is not available across the whole image).  Excessively "warm" or "green" lighting (normal incandescent or traditional fluorescent lighting) actually eliminates certain visible colors when either being perceived by the human eye, or recorded by a camera. 

The point is, if you're going to take a lot of photos of your layout, use lighting that contains the complete ROYGBIV spectrum (5,000K daylight) which can then be manipulated for whatever effect you're shooting for (either cool or warm) because the whole visible spectrum is there to play with.  If you want consistent lighting that pleases only your eye, then go with whatever you like, since no two human eyeballs/brains perceive color exactly the same.  You might as well use what "tastes" best to you, rather than use what functions best for your camera due to the engineered-in calibrations of its sensor and software.

[Scottl]

I've followed this thread with interest.  I have been attracted to LEDs as a light source and I am learning quite a bit from some of the posts here.  I'm skeptical of the quality that reels purchased on ebay might provide, but it is an attractive way to do valence or lower level lighting for a layout.

One comment I'll add is that people seem to have a lot of lights for their layouts.  I guess I am rather concerned about issues like power consumption, but when I finished the layout room (approximately 10' X 10'), I installed two circuits of pot lights and installed 14W warm white CFL spot lights.  The dual circuit allows only turning on two lights for quick trips into the room.  The brand I bought turned out to have a very noticable warm up period, but like Bob, I don't see this as much of an issue.  The bulbs have worked fine for 6 years and I expect probably 4-6 years more, given most of my CFLs have lasted ten or more years (we have one from 1993 that still operates).  The total load is under 60W, and it is quite bright in the room with this.  It seems excessive to me to have more lighting and I think the heat load would be substantial, even with CFL or tube versions.  In Alaska, heat load might be a benefit, but in many places this is a concern.

The CFL and tube technology is quite mature now, which means a good variety of products, generally good quality, and excellent energy/light output performance.  Judging by a survey at Home Depot today, I see CFLs are about 1/4 of the price of the same lumens from LEDs.  There are conservation coupons at HD today that made my four-bulb purchase total $3.  Given this, I would seriously consider tube or CFL options where you have space or if you are thinking about general lighting of the room.

[DKS]

The point is, if you're going to take a lot of photos of your layout, use lighting that contains the complete ROYGBIV spectrum (5,000K daylight) which can then be manipulated for whatever effect you're shooting for (either cool or warm) because the whole visible spectrum is there to play with.

Except for ordinary tungsten lamps (and even they have a trace of near-UV), all light sources contain the complete spectrum; it's just a matter of where it peaks that creates its apparent color temperature. For that matter, fluorescent lamps are more problematic than tungsten sources since they contain spikes in their spectra which can affect color rendition, whereas tungsten has a very smooth output curve. Very costly full-spectrum fluorescent lamps will be more controlled than what you'll find at the big box stores, but they will drain your wallet. Thankfully, modern cameras and software are able to compensate--to a degree; they're not all perfect.

I will say that the early LEDs were wimpy and had color issues. They are, however, improving very rapidly, and the latest ones are quite powerful and seem to have a very servicable spectrum. (I'd love to run a spectral analysis of them--if only I had the gear.) I use them now for product photography and I have no complaints.