Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Bit OT. CFLs revisited.

R

Ron(UK)

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich said:
For the curious, the non-believers, and the "I need a new geek toy" set
there's a very inexpensive "student" spectrometer that makes it really
easy to see just how discrete the spectra is (are?) on many florescent
lamps.

http://www.anchoroptics.com/catalog/product.cfm?id=99

It's kind of flimsy (vacuum-formed plastic shell) but the damned thing
really works. Quite interesting (Must. Resist. "Eye-opening") to
compare a narrow CFL spectrum to a white LED.

Don't know of a UK source, unfortunately.


News just in, as they say http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7167860.stm

Ron(UK)
 
N

N Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa Daily said:
Wot a cracking idea, Gromit ! I could then have even LESS light coming out
of them ... d;~}

Arfa

I just tried a red broad felt tip pen on half a CFL.
Gave a poor streaky finish but certainly a much improved red caste on
that side, but noticeably reduced brightness, so horses for courses.
 
A

Allodoxaphobia

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have just returned from a Christmas trip to Vegas, staying in the same big
name Strip-side hotel that I always do. However, since I was last there a
year ago, they seem to have had a big drive to turn the room lighting over
to CFLs. Now, instead of getting a decent light in the room when you come in
the door, it's like someone is going round lighting candles one at a time.

Do you suppose that joint went out and bought Top Dollar CFLs, or the
very cheapest -- like their toilet paper? :)

One thing I noticed is that, since they last so much longer than an
incandescent, they get dusty/dirty! I had ocassion to clean the
decorative glass shields on the light fixture above the bathroom mirror.

It was a 'rack assembly' with 4 lights. I had to unscrew the CFLs to
get the glass shields out. So, as long as I had to handle them anyway,
I used a damp, soapy rag to wipe down the tubes of each CFL. The dust
and grime being removed was quite apparent as I did it. And, upon
reassembly, the light in the room _was_ noticably brighter.

Incandescents just don't often last that long to get that grimy.

Jonesy
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
For your own personal use.
Assuming your lamps are bright enough, then you could always mix up some
varnish and some red + ? dye/ink to make a weak colour wash to paint over
your CFLs to adjust the colouration to your own taste.


That will just make things worse. Compact fluorescent lamps all use
trichromatic phosphors, they emit in fairly narrow peaks in blue, green, and
reddish orange, you can't create wavelengths that aren't there with filters.

Highest CRI I've seen from a compact lamp is 82, though you can get linear
lamps with 90+ CRI but they're slightly less efficient.
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
Incandescents just don't often last that long to get that grimy.

I've got two PAR38 150 watt lamps in downlighters either side of the
window which are on most nights - albeit via a dimmer. And they're about
20 years old. Removed once in a while for cleaning.
 
F

Fleetie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Webb said:
For the curious, the non-believers, and the "I need a new geek toy" set
there's a very inexpensive "student" spectrometer that makes it really
easy to see just how discrete the spectra is (are?) on many florescent
lamps.

http://www.anchoroptics.com/catalog/product.cfm?id=99

It's kind of flimsy (vacuum-formed plastic shell) but the damned thing
really works. Quite interesting (Must. Resist. "Eye-opening") to
compare a narrow CFL spectrum to a white LED.

Don't know of a UK source, unfortunately.

I have a nice spectrometer-grade grating, but you CAN just use one
of the transparent (unsilvered) blank CDs that you often get at
the top of a stack of recordable CD blanks, and just look through it.

The red response from CFLs is interesting. The red is quite
narrowband from what I've seen. It also is in CRT TVs. The latter
use a yttrium compound to produce red, I believe.

For good colour rendition, you need a nice broad, continuous
spectrum, from far-red to far-blue.

You COULD produce "white" using just a red laser, a green one,
and a blue one (i.e. all VERY narrowband) so you've effectively
got just 3 wavelengths present! BUT the colour rendition would
be AWFUL if you used it as room illumination, AND you could come
up with coloured cards, or filters, that looked (say) green in
sunlight, and looked TOTALLY BLACK under this laser "white" light -
for obvious reasons.


Martin
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
You COULD produce "white" using just a red laser, a green one,
and a blue one (i.e. all VERY narrowband) so you've effectively
got just 3 wavelengths present! BUT the colour rendition would
be AWFUL if you used it as room illumination, AND you could come
up with coloured cards, or filters, that looked (say) green in
sunlight, and looked TOTALLY BLACK under this laser "white" light -
for obvious reasons.


It won't look totally black, colored cards or filters are not nearly narrow
enough for that, but the color rendering will not be perfect if the emission
bands don't exactly match the sensors in the eye. You can in fact have very
good color rendition with three fairly narrow emitters, but the problem is
finding a good red phosphor. The modern Yttrium based phosphor used in color
CRTs and trichromatic fluoescent lamps is orange-red, rather than a pure
deep red. It's much more efficient and longer lasting than the old true red
phosphor but the CRI will not exceed the mid 80s using it.

Generally speaking, a light source that does a good job rendering reds will
have good all around color rendition, red is the hard part.
 
F

Fleetie

Jan 1, 1970
0
James Sweet said:
It won't look totally black, colored cards or filters are not nearly narrow enough for that, but the color rendering will not be
perfect if the emission bands don't exactly match the sensors in the eye.

I disagree a bit, but this is indeed a very complex field. As you say,
there are also the response curves of the eye's sensors to consider, but
in this case, IF you could find a narrowband-ISH (say) green filter that
looked green in sunlight, but whose green peak didn't match the (e.g. 532nm)
wavelength of the green laser, it'd look damn near black.

Actually I first thought about this a long time ago, and it's something
I'd love to try!

Mostly unrelated, but I believe that the eye's "red" sensor doesn't actually
peak in what we call "red". It's more orange, IIRC. It's just that the other
2 sensors drop off so much "earlier" (as lambda increases), that at the red end
of visible, that's the only one with ANY response, so we do get a different
unique overall perceived colour (i.e. what we think of as "deep red").

Also, there's the thing about the eye's "red" sensor also having response in
far-blue/violet, which leads to the confusing things that happen when we look
at sources in that part of the spectum, as well as the confusion that arises
between violet/purple.

It's interesting stuff!


Martin
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
For the curious, the non-believers, and the "I need a new geek toy" set
there's a very inexpensive "student" spectrometer that makes it really
easy to see just how discrete the spectra is (are?) on many florescent
lamps.

It's kind of flimsy (vacuum-formed plastic shell) but the damned thing
really works. Quite interesting (Must. Resist. "Eye-opening") to
compare a narrow CFL spectrum to a white LED.

There's no such thing as a 'white' LED. And even the closest is far far
worse than a decent fluorescent.
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
Allodoxaphobia said:
Do you suppose that joint went out and bought Top Dollar CFLs, or the
very cheapest -- like their toilet paper? :)
<snip>

Well, I have to say that I had no complaint with their toilet paper. They
actually use Quilted Northern, which is what I buy myself, when I stay in a
private place in Florida. Not being a native American, I have no idea
whether this is considered to be a laughable 'cheapo' brand over there, but
it seems to compare pretty reasonably with the brand that I usually buy
here, which is *not* a cheap and cheerful one. So I'm not sure what that
says about the CFLs that they are using. I don't expect for one minute that
they will be the most expensive ones that you can get, but by the same
token, with the buying power that an organisation like MGM / Mirage have
got, there is no reason to suspect that they would be bottom end Dollar
Store jobs either. If in fact they are, then I think that they will quickly
run into trouble with failures.

However, the basic point that I was making was how that just by changing the
room's lighting, they have made what was a perfectly acceptable room, in
which you were able to read at night, into a dim depressing cave. Perhaps
the hope is that you will spend more time in the casino, and less in the
room ... ;~}

Arfa
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa said:
Wot a cracking idea, Gromit ! I could then have even LESS light coming out
of them ... d;~}


Gromit? I just picked up a DVD of "Wallace & Gromit", "The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit" :)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael A. Terrell said:
Gromit? I just picked up a DVD of "Wallace & Gromit", "The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit" :)

Just so ! In Wallace and Gromit - A Fine Day Out, Gromit makes toast for
Wallace, and Wallace declares "Cracking toast Gromit !", meaning really
good. The phrase has now become firmly lodged in the language over here, and
is often used to say that anything is good, or a good idea. The words
'cracking' and 'Gromit' are also used on their own, like I did, for much the
same purpose. For what it's worth, although I enjoyed "Curse", for me, the
best ones are still the original TV 'shorts' that were turned out by Nick
Parks each Christmas. Have you seen them all ? I think that "The Wrong
Trousers" is my favourite. All of the story twists and turns are so well
observed.

Arfa
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa said:
Just so ! In Wallace and Gromit - A Fine Day Out, Gromit makes toast for
Wallace, and Wallace declares "Cracking toast Gromit !", meaning really
good. The phrase has now become firmly lodged in the language over here, and
is often used to say that anything is good, or a good idea. The words
'cracking' and 'Gromit' are also used on their own, like I did, for much the
same purpose. For what it's worth, although I enjoyed "Curse", for me, the
best ones are still the original TV 'shorts' that were turned out by Nick
Parks each Christmas. Have you seen them all ?


Some, but I don't know how many were made. I saw them when I had
Direct TV, but with this 20 channel basic Cable service there is very
little, other than local channels.

I think that "The Wrong Trousers" is my favourite.


That was a good one. :)

All of the story twists and turns are so well observed.

Arfa


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
N

N Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa Daily said:
<snip>

Well, I have to say that I had no complaint with their toilet paper. They
actually use Quilted Northern, which is what I buy myself, when I stay in a
private place in Florida. Not being a native American, I have no idea
whether this is considered to be a laughable 'cheapo' brand over there, but
it seems to compare pretty reasonably with the brand that I usually buy
here, which is *not* a cheap and cheerful one.

....

At least pre-moistened toilet paper never caught on over here.
I see ASDA is now selling "recycled toilet tissue"

Some local trivia and lavatorial humour, thrown together by your's truly
http://www.divdev.fsnet.co.uk/graff.htm
 
B

bz

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] wrote in 3258.bay.webtv.net:
Energy Saving Bulbs 'Can Cause Migranes' Warn Experts.
www.standeyo.com

.......Larry

Slightly different CFL 'headache'.

Wife bought a couple of 4 packs of '40 watt equivalent' CFL bulbs [mfgr
unknown].

I put 3 of them in a fixture in the kitchen.
Even with the kitchen dimmer at minimum, and the other kitchen lights very
dim, the CFLs are almost full brightness.

Shows that they are rather efficient but dimming them may be a bit of a
headache.

Also, I note that the package warns about possible radio frequency
interference and advises not to use near vital communications equipment.

Argh!

I am going to look for some LED lights.




--
bz 73 de N5BZ k

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

[email protected] remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] wrote in 3258.bay.webtv.net:
Slightly different CFL 'headache'.
Wife bought a couple of 4 packs of '40 watt equivalent' CFL bulbs [mfgr
unknown].
I put 3 of them in a fixture in the kitchen. Even with the kitchen
dimmer at minimum, and the other kitchen lights very dim, the CFLs are
almost full brightness.
Shows that they are rather efficient but dimming them may be a bit of a
headache.

Of course. Their inbuilt power supply tries to overcome any waveform
modification a dimmer produces. And you're lucky the dimmer survived.
Also, I note that the package warns about possible radio frequency
interference and advises not to use near vital communications equipment.

I am going to look for some LED lights.

Which will produce even more nasty light than CFLs. There are more
productive ways of saving energy at home without having to pay the price
of inferior results.
 
G

GregS

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] wrote in 3258.bay.webtv.net:
Energy Saving Bulbs 'Can Cause Migranes' Warn Experts.
www.standeyo.com

.......Larry

Slightly different CFL 'headache'.

Wife bought a couple of 4 packs of '40 watt equivalent' CFL bulbs [mfgr
unknown].

I put 3 of them in a fixture in the kitchen.
Even with the kitchen dimmer at minimum, and the other kitchen lights very
dim, the CFLs are almost full brightness.

Shows that they are rather efficient but dimming them may be a bit of a
headache.

Also, I note that the package warns about possible radio frequency
interference and advises not to use near vital communications equipment.

Argh!

I am going to look for some LED lights.

The dimmable CFL's typicall cost $15 to $20 ea. Most packages clearly indicate
what type they are.

greg
 
I have one CFL light bulb in my kitchen and one in my bathroom, I never
turn those two lights off.I use them only because they last for
years.The other light bulbs in my house are General Electric Reveal
incandescent light bulbs.In my opinion, CFL light bulbs should be
outlawed in America.
cuhulin
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have one CFL light bulb in my kitchen and one in my bathroom, I never
turn those two lights off.I use them only because they last for
years.The other light bulbs in my house are General Electric Reveal
incandescent light bulbs.In my opinion, CFL light bulbs should be
outlawed in America.
cuhulin

In my opinion, they should be outlawed world-wide. Period. Suddenly, just as
the government here in the UK looks set to ban sales of incandescents, a
movement is rearing up to bring to the attention of the great unwashed ( and
the dumb politicians ) the potential hazards of using, accidentally
breaking, and safely disposing of CFLs. I sincerely hope that it gains
sufficient momentum to cast enough doubt over this dreadful knee-jerk
technology, to knock its viability as a direct replacement for
incandescents, firmly on the head ...

Arfa
 
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