My question concerns the Kelvin Light temperature for a 14 x 24 ft layout room with a 7.5 ft ceiling and no windows. The new LED flat panals are ideal for ceiling mount, but I need help figuring out what temperture light will give the best natural look. 3000 deg (soft white) is very yellow and my orange Empire Builder trains come out very orange. Conversely, the 6000 - 7000 deg lights (bright white) are very blue.
I’m thinking bright white or daylight for the room and softer accents or spots to highlight key areas.
The standard for flourescent color rendering is 5000K, with the GE Chroma 50 tube and its equivalents being the desirable item. I have the Sylvania brand Chroma 50 equivalent tubes in my vast tube sky, but rarely use them since switching to LED illumination.
One thing to definitely be wary of are the descriptions (warm white, cool white), so you are right to focus on the color temp. I have some LEDs described as cool whote which are definitely daylight, or closer to 5000K than not.
However, in my experience there is a wider range of color temps that work for LEDs. There’s also the matter that you can rarely get enough light in one pass through most model RR scenes (very narrow shelves excepted.) Thus, the opportunity for multiple passes also is a chance to use different color temp LEDs. So far, this is something purely experimental here, but does suggest some interesting possibilities as well as making it clear there’s no exactly “right” color temp. Get close in the spec, then look at them in real life once they arrive, and you should be OK.
The Home Depot near me has a display set up with different color temperatures of light. You might be able to take one of your models to the store and see what looks good.
Be aware that for photography, mixing color temps might cause problems, and that some LED lighting has complicated video shoots for the Model Railroader Video Plus staff as it creates a noticable flicker.
I just converted over to led’s from cfl’s. Thought I could go with a mix like worked with cfl’s but it looked bad. Ended up going with 3000. Let me warn you that some colors by some manufactures looks bad under led’s like Atlas yellow will tend to glow, you may find others.
That is true and I should have been more specific in what I was referring to, which is that color temps that are close will likely work, but mixing from different ends of the spectrum to the middle likely will not.
Yeah, that’s one feature of LED lighting that may or may not be noticed, depending on the power supply. I’ve done a little video lately and it hasn’t been much of an issue, just noticeable every one in awhile when things get lined up just wrong.
However, if the MRVP staff somehow shows up wanting to do a video, I’d be happy to switch my power-thirsty tubes back on for the ocassion and dig out about three dozen haolgen track lights.[:P]
It’s been my experience that my vision adapts to lighting color. My brain does color correcting.
This falls apart when:
The light color is so far off that my brain says “I don’t think so, pal.”
Or.
There’s more than one color of light present.
Right now I’m in an office lit with those Chroma 50 Mike talked about. There’s a big window and it’s overcast. At my desk, all the papers are looking white. The clouds look a little blue.
I’ve also got some track lights with halogen MR16’s. When those, only, are on, things look white under them. But when I have ALL the lights on, suddenly the MR16’s look like they’re emitting orange light. Or, if I’m somewhere else in the room, the Chroma 50 light looks REAL chilly.
So, my suspicion is that, if the light sources are all the same color temperature, your eyes will adapt. That would include window light.
If you do photography under those lights, you may have to do color correction in “post-processing”.
There is a nice app for smart phones called “Light Meter” that will display the lumens and color temperature. I used it when testing various LED strips while I was deciding on which led strips to go with. I ended up going with 2835 leds at about 4000 kelvin.
I have Philips 5000k ‘Daylight’ LEDs. At least that’s what the box says. I’d be curious to see what they actually are. I’ll look for that metering app.
Bright, clear light. Easy to read fine print and details. Natural color rendering. The ‘soft white’ 2700k seemed too yellow, especially by comparison when seen together.
I was thinking, should MR mag put a lighting description in their layout data box when they have a track plan? Would be interesting, to me anyway as there are more and more options available.
BTW, I model the GN Appleyard in the early '50s. Before moving to my new quarters I had a 15 x 22 foot L shelf in the front room (landlady approved) that was just the yard. Two neighbors came by to see and Carolyn gasped when she saw the engine yards, pointed to the big electric engine repair facility and said, “OMG, that’s where my father worked - he was the shop foreman for years!” Great fun and I think i’m on the right track (pun intended).
Let’s keep this thread going. I’ll post again and report when I get some lights up after the first of the year. Again thank you all.
A single color temp light source didn’t look right to me. Ended up using a combination of 5000K and 6500K to get the right “look”. Be aware the CRI of the light source will have a big impact on how model colors appear.
That could get complicated. What you usually see in the magazine are pics that were specifically lit for that purpose. What is typical of the layout is something else and most likely hard to depict in the mag, even assuming there was space for such a representative pic.
I do think a good article on the basic options available now in lighting would be a great idea. That’s a moving target, but I think it’s been awhile since there’s been such an article and things have changed a lot since then