In the next week or so I will be installing the electric for our hobby room. We will be installing twelve recess lights in the ceiling. Having seen several post that recommend using florescent light fixtures because it provides better light for pictures. I am using recess because they are free , we recently returned a sales model to its orginial condition and had to remove all of the stuff we put in , so I had the electrician remove these and give them to me for use in our hobby room. So HERE IS THE QUESTION , would you recommend using the energy bulbs that I believe are florescent ? Would these provide the same type of lighting or would you all recommend another type of bulb ? FYI the fixtures use a 65w bulb.
When I rebuilt an attic room into the train room, I installed track lights and used florescent Philips, Flood 40R type spots. The spots don’t use much in the way of watts and produce very little heat in the summer. I like the spots as they can highlight areas of the layout that I want brighter just like clouds in the sky would do.
The issue isn’t really that florescents are better for photography - in fact, generally they give things an unwanted green tint on normal film or slides - but that florescents use less energy, and are quite a bit cooler so they don’t heat up the room.
They also provide better light coverage because…well, OK, I don’t quite understand how this works, but with a regular light bulb the amount of light you get from say 4 ft. away from the light is only 1/4th the amount of light you get at 2’ away. With florescents it’s “linear” so the light from 4 ft. away is 1/2 as bright as from 2’ away.
In your case the price is right (free) so I’d go with what you have. I’d try the florescent bulbs, maybe try a couple and see how you like them. It may be that a mix of regular and florescents will give the right mix for your layout room.
I would investigate a little more about fluorescent bulbs, I’m hearing pro&con, we have a couple in our house, they are very bright and hard on my eyes(as are all fluorescent lights) they also give a not true sense of color, ask around to people that have them.
I’ve used fluorescent bulbs over my layout for many years. Only recently (within the past year) I’ve gone to compact fluorescents. My advise is based on my observations over the years. Any bulb mark ‘Daylight’ should serve your purpose very well. They don’t light everything in a bright white wash. Instead they put off a more natural light that brings out the colors better. Nearly all my layout photos from the past few years were taken under fluorescent daylight bulbs.
I’ve used compact flourescent lighting for some of my train photos. I actually like the color I get from it. This is a single screw-in CF bulb, mounted in a floor lamp. It gives a nice warm yellow glow, as opposed to standard long-tube flourescents, which add a greenish tint from quantum effects of mercury in the light.
Light intensity goes as one over R squared. The type of light does not matter. Some lights, like halogen spots, can be more efficient because they put a reflector behind the bulb and therefore get more light out of the front, but once it leaves the bulb, the same rules apply to all. Ordinary incandescent bulbs are not very efficient. The wattage of a bulb is based on the power it consumes, not its light output. For comparison, some manufacturers of compact flourescent bulbs have been rating their bulbs in “equivalent wattage” rather than actual wattage. That gives the wattage of an incandescent bulb that would be required to give the same brightness. People are just accustomed to “100-watt” bulbs. A true hundred watt CF bulb would be much, much brighter.
Compact flourescent bulbs, though, have a very big drawback. They do NOT work with dimmers. I have dimmers in almost all the ceiling fixtures in my home. I like to be able to set the brightness appropriate to the task. When running trains, sometimes that’s a very dim light to simulate evening or night operations.
Broadly speaking, fluorescent lamps (both the long straight tubes and the curlyque compact fluorescents) use much less electricity than incandescent lamps. A 40 watt fluorescent tube throws as much light as a 100 watt bulb. A 26 watt compact fluorescent lamp throws the light of a 75 watt bulb. The down side of fluorescent lighting is poor-to-ugly color, which makes for odd color photographs and bad looking reds on the layout. The newer fluorescent tubes (very thin tube with electronic ballast) have better color than the older thicker tubes with magnetic ballasts. Some folks find the color of the newer lamps OK, others find them merely not as bad as the old ones.
To get the brightness you need in a train room for working on the layout, you really want fluorescents, the necessary light from incandescent ceiling fixtures will get hot, overheat the room, and suck down electricity fast enough to make your electric meter spin out. For operating the layout, you need much less light, and incandescent track lights, or plain old porcelain fixtures hidden behind the fascia become practical.
The ideal setup would be a lot of ceiling mounted fluorescents for work lights, and a string of incandescents over the layout with necessary switches to turn one set or the other set (or both) off.
I have replaced all the incandescent lights in my cellar / layout room / workshop with compact fluroescent lights (CFLs). I have not seen any problems with photography and with a 23W CFL repacing a 100W regular light, it makes sense on my electric bill.
CFLs come in a number of varities these days, including some in an envelope that replaces PAR style floodlights. There are also some that are dimmable and others that replace 3-way bulbs. If you live in Maine, the state energy office gives a $1.00 instant rebate in a CFL purchase. [8D]
there are different flourescents of light type available, and as meantioned, a daylight one may serve the broad color spectrum fine. Traditional florescents have been always blueish.
I walekd into Menards and they had the screw in bulbs flourescents that said they were dimmable, maybe 14 bucks for 3 or 4, more expensive than the regulars out now but very affordable. I looked up dimmable flourscents once and it was EXPANSIVE!!! maybe more for theatrical use. But maybe todays technology and marketing might be dropping the prices. There are these light fixtures with dimmers and house lighting with dimmers and restaurants etc etc, so maybe the screw in bulbs being dimmable made some marketing sense, so that sounds cool to me.
However for my modules I will be making special lighting situation to make day/night so I can’t use any of these flourescants for this.
I like whats happening now in the flourecents if I was making a more traditional layout, I would use them.
Yes. Just remember that all florescent bulbs are not created equal. They come in several flavors designated as normal, daylight, and warm (probably others). The normal are the regular green tinted ones everyone expects. The daylight are bluish and the warm simulate the red of incandescent light bulbs. In my opinion, the daylight would be the best bet to give the layout room an outdoor look.
Technically they flicker 60 times per second. Whether or not you (or any human) can see/sense this is open for debate. You can get more light per watt and still be cooler. Try them, it would be cheap to change back, especially since these are recessed. No one has to look directly at the bulb.
Where I would not recommend these is if you are planning on dimming the lights to simulate day break or twilight. They don’t dim. I know the immediately prior poster said they found some that said they were, but that would be the exception (If I even believe that).
For this look at the true wattage of the bulb, not the wattage equivalent. I believe a 100w equivalent bulb only uses 23w., so if they physically fit these could easily be used in the fixtures.
There are in fact dimmable CFLs, http://www.greenelectricalsupply.com/dimmable-compact-fluorescent-light-bulbs.aspx
Thanks to all who reponded to this inquiry. I had not considered some of the points brought up such as day and night , very valuable input provided. Again Thank you.
My local Home Depot has “Sunlight” compact fluorescent bulbs that consume 9 Watts of power and emit an amount of light equivalent to a 45 Watt bulb. When I changed my track lighting from Halogen floodlight bulbs to these the improvement in color was very noticeable, and they remain significantly cooler, which is also a consideration with recessed light fixtures.
Also want to mention that digital cameras nowadays have various light settings for fluorescent or incandescent indoor lighting. I’ve had no problem using fluorescent lighting for photography.
I replaced the overhead lights in my bedroom (where I do most of my building/detailing) with CFL’s. I started getting horrible headaches! Switched back to regular bulbs and the headaches went away. That’s strange because the tube fluorescents in my train room don’t bother me. Wonder if there’s some difference between the two??
I’ve found fluorescents wash out a lot of the weathering and detail from my digital photos.[2c]
Good afternoon Loather , boy that is strange. Could it be the direction of the light ?