Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: slope on 21 March, 2017, 07:06:42 pm
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Firstly apologies - my forum search style is bad ::-)
I'm behind times and then some it seems. Went to buy a replacement bulb and aaaargh I don't understand anymore.
All my fittings are proper bayonet types - all are 240v. Still use old filament bulbs for the kitchen/dinner table cos the colour is RIGHT. Other lamps around the place were those squirly expensive things which emit cold naff light and end up being covered in dark handkerchieves etc
BUT NOW it's all different and I need a bank loan/starve for a week or light candles :o
So what is the equivalent of a 40W and 60W bayonet soft warm colour thing?
Help ???
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The LED ones come in a variety of colour temperatures. There are plenty that look like incandescent bulbs, and bayonet ones are available.
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Have a look online somewhere like https://www.ledbulbs.co.uk. They will let you search by cap type and then you'll need to choose whether you want CFL, LED or something else. If you go to the buying guide page it will tell you all about lumens, wattage & colour temperature etc.
Other online lightbulb retailers are available....
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Have a look online somewhere like https://www.ledbulbs.co.uk. They will let you search by cap type and then you'll need to choose whether you want CFL, LED or something else. If you go to the buying guide page it will tell you all about lumens, wattage & colour temperature etc.
Other online lightbulb retailers are available....
Brilliant - thank you. I just panicked in Tesco the other day - thinking life's increasingly going to get like this :-[
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Also, if you want to search the forum go to Google instead and, in the search box enter:
Yoursearchterm site:yacf.co.uk
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Lots on ebay still.
example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GLS-Pearl-Light-Bulb-40W-60W-100W-Bayonet-Cap-B22-240V-Heavy-Duty-Long-Life-Lamp-/121458997373?var=&hash=item1c4785387d:m:mfWK47oU5ukwEzCiQ14tYrQ
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Standard bayonet caps are 22mm.
You will need 4-7W LED to be equivalent to your 40W bulb.
Some of my lamps that were claimed to last for 30,000 hours have blown faster than their tungsten equivalents, at vast expense.
There are still some bulbs here that pre-date my taking up residence 1n 1999.
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Bulbs on ebay can be hit-or-miss, I've had some excellent ones but also some which failed fairly quickly. Wherever you buy from, keep the receipt & a note of which bulb it is, and get a replacement if it fails within a year or two.
Decent LEDs are now really good - better light than tungsten, much better than CFL, and will save a reasonable amount of electricity. Philips ones seem pretty good (unlike their CFL offerings).
For most domestic settings choose a warm white. Don't expect the Watt-equivalent ratings to be reliable. If the bulb is visible in the fitting, the "filament" style ones look good, you can even get interesting shape bulbs. If you have a dimmer, check the bulb is compatible.
To get the benefit, put the LEDs in the lights you use the most, and move the existing tungsten bulbs to places where they're not on very much. It will take a lifetime or two to save the cost of an LED in electricity savings for the light in the cupboard under the stairs.
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The thing to do
well this is my technique at least...
is to just take the old one to the supermarket with me so that I can pick one that fits properly.
Usual rule is that if you cheap then it's shit basically (that's my experience). They far outlast filament bulbs so the price differential is somewhat offset - plus they burn vastly less leccy so reduce that bill.
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For most domestic settings choose a warm white. Don't expect the Watt-equivalent ratings to be reliable. If the bulb is visible in the fitting, the "filament" style ones look good
For values of good that involve horrible glare if you attempt to illuminate a room with them, which seems to be the latest trend in hipster cafes and the like. I think they're quite pretty, but best used sparingly.
Anecdotally they seem to be particularly plagued with 100Hz flicker. Presumably due to half-arsed driver circuitry, consistent with driving a long string of LEDs in series and cramming the electronics into the small physical volume available in the cap.
Combined, these features make them barakta's latest arch-nemesis. They make her ill within minutes.
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Anecdotally they seem to be particularly plagued with 100Hz flicker.
Oh dear, that would be totally unacceptable - and really do my head in :-[
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Decent LEDs are now really good - better light than tungsten, much better than CFL, and will save a reasonable amount of electricity. Philips ones seem pretty good (unlike their CFL offerings).
Agree re the latest LED replacements for ye olde style bulbs. We've some at work (replaced CFL's) and they look surprisingly good, plus there's no warm-up time a la CFL.
I'd differ on Philips CFL's though. We've had the "Tornado" ones for several years now, and - warm-up time aside - they've been good. We've had a few failures though - mainly because we use lamps to light our rooms, as opposed to dangly ceiling fittings (our ceilings are only 7'). In the lamps the bulbs are "upside down", and debris - usually dead insects - gather at the base on the cap. This seems to cause local overheating and then failure.
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Usual rule is that if you cheap then it's shit basically (that's my experience). They far outlast filament bulbs so the price differential is somewhat offset - plus they burn vastly less leccy so reduce that bill.
This. We have LEDs throughout the Asbestos Palace and they're fine, but we paid more. The cheap Chinese crap on eBay, if you're lucky they won't burn your house down, but after a week or two you'll start confessing to crimes you haven't committed. Anything to make it stop.
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The new thing is light fittings with integral LEDs. With some slight trepidation we have put one in a bathroom. £60 from John Lewis buys you a base-plate with a circuit board and a translucent white plastic cover. There's something weird about an 'empty' light fitting shining brightly.
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Anecdotally they seem to be particularly plagued with 100Hz flicker. Presumably due to half-arsed driver circuitry, consistent with driving a long string of LEDs in series and cramming the electronics into the small physical volume available in the cap.
I have had to deflicker (open up, add a suitable capacitor, glue back together) a dozen LED bulbs.
What was depressing interesting was that both designs that the 12 were made to already had capacitors, but too small to significantly reduce the flicker.
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What's depressing is that so many people seem unable to perceive the flicker at all, so you come across like one of those people who are 'allergic to WiFi'[1] when you complain about it.
Shooting video of it on a smartphone seems to be a good (if unscientific) way to demonstrate the problem, as you usually get some sort of rolling shutter artefact.
[1] I wonder how often that's actually a symptom of bad lighting?
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We buy standard, traditional light bulbs in 40, 60 and 100 watt versions from "Barney's Rubble" in Goldthorpe.
They are legally sold as they are "heavy duty" type for industrial use ..... and all available in soft tones :)
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...so many people seem unable to perceive the flicker at all...
A couple of years ago, the light cluster above my desk at work was playing up so we got a special lighting chap in to check them.
He told me that he could recognise LEDs by the different flicker rate, so I've always assumed some people must be able to.
I can't but I know how annoying a flashing light can be so you both have my sympathies.
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What's depressing is that so many people seem unable to perceive the flicker at all, so you come across like one of those people who are 'allergic to WiFi'[1] when you complain about it.
Shooting video of it on a smartphone seems to be a good (if unscientific) way to demonstrate the problem, as you usually get some sort of rolling shutter artefact.
[1] I wonder how often that's actually a symptom of bad lighting?
Even worse, when some light, usual in power indicator or similar is powered at 50 Hz, and still some people can't see that it flickers.
The centre vision, no movement frequency limit for human vision is of the order of 50 Hz, and that is sometimes taken as the frequency needed to avoid visible flicker. With movement, such as moving the eyes, high contrast ratios, and edge of vision, the detectable frequency can easily exceed 2 kHz.
Don't get me started on 100 Hz car lights, run from a 12 V battery.........
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Several years ago I bought a batch of General Electric CFLs (large, globe-style models). I got them because they had the best spectral power distribution of the CFLs I could find at the time. I think they were something like 18 euros each – very expensive. None blew over eight years. None flickered noticeably. None buzzed or hummed.
Now I’ve moved flat and need to get lower power bulbs for some fittings (halogen bulbs still make more sense for bathrooms, toilets, etc.).
To my surprise, the period between my moving flats seemed to encapsulate the whole life-cycle of CFLs, which now appear to be obsolete.
Are LEDs really up to this job in terms of colour quality? CCFLs were much better than LEDs for display backlights for many years.
Don't get me started on 100 Hz car lights, run from a 12 V battery.........
The flicker of many modern cars’ lamps drives me nuts. I see great arcs of red dots when I scan the scene in a traffic jam. How the heck was this allowed? Among many other problems with car lighting, which has become a serious problem for me in the last few years …
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FWIW you can usually see if you have flicker by waving your fingers between you and your light; at a certain speed your fingers will strobe if the flicker is bad.
Most domestic tungsten lights flicker too, just nothing like as badly as some other lights do.
BTW one of the main differentiators between different LED lights is efficiency.
At the budget end of the spectrum you can buy cheap LED bulbs in the pound shop with about 70-90 lumens per Watt. These seem OK for the money (and are slightly more efficient than CFLs are usually); reasonable colour temperature, a bit flickery perhaps. They are still about six times more efficient than typical BC tungsten bulbs (around 10 lumens per Watt, although there are slightly more efficient types too).
Spend more and you get more light, up to about 200 lumens per Watt at present in commercial LED bulbs. In the laboratory, 200 lumens per Watt was ground-breaking just a few years ago; now they are doing about 300 lumens per Watt in the lab, maybe more.
So, does it make sense to spend more on expensive bulbs?
Suppose it is (say) a choice between a cheap 5W LED bulb or a more expensive 3W LED bulb to make the same amount of light. Over the life of the bulb (say 20000 hours...? -they claim 30000 for most LEDs) the 5W bulb will use 100 units of electricity and the 3W bulb will use 60 units of electricity. At today's prices (say 25p/unit?) that is £25 vs £15. So yes, it is worth spending up to about £10 more on the more expensive bulb in this case! [Note that this also assumes that the cheaper bulb will last as long, which is a fairly big assumption...].
Prof David Mackay (RIP) reckoned it wasn't even worth 'using up' old tungsten bulbs, they are so inefficient. In 20000 hours of tungsten bulb use, equivalent to either of the bulbs above, you will use about £150 in electricity and you will have used up the life in about 20 conventional BC bulbs. You could replace 20 bulbs with cheap LEDs (and pay the electricity bill for them) about four times over for the same money.
Another way of looking at it is that a 60W BC tungsten bulb will last about 1000Hrs and will use 60 units (about £15 worth) of electricity over its life. If you have 20 such bulbs already (that you plan to 'use up') and each one only does about 50 to 100hrs a year, you will still be using some of them in ten or twenty years time... If you replace all those with (even) cheap LED bulbs, the payback time is about 2-3 years or something like that. The higher the usage rate, the shorter the payback time. After 'payback' you are getting your light for a tiny fraction of the cost...
So tungsten lights are arguably best now thought of as a fairly expensive way of heating the room in a feeble fashion, with an additional benefit of some light coming out....
cheers
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Even worse, when some light, usual in power indicator or similar is powered at 50 Hz, and still some people can't see that it flickers.
The centre vision, no movement frequency limit for human vision is of the order of 50 Hz, and that is sometimes taken as the frequency needed to avoid visible flicker. With movement, such as moving the eyes, high contrast ratios, and edge of vision, the detectable frequency can easily exceed 2 kHz.
100Hz doesn't bother me in my central vision, though I'd rather not use it for room lighting. I can percieve flicker at hundreds of Hz in my peripheral vision if I'm looking for it.
We've tested it, and impressively Barakta can perceive flicker in a bog standard red indicator LED at up to about 6kHz. She has the additional problem of not moving her eyes horizontally, so she moves her head instead, which means no saccade blanking - she sees a blurry image during the movement, which becomes a confusing mess of multiple stroboscopic images under flickering light. It's not surprising she has no tolerance for it.
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I'd like my domestic light to be qualitifiably (is there a word?) warm and friendly. I don't live in a warehouse.
Unfortunately I'm on the suffering end of perceiving flickering lights (and all sorts of other stuff that the majority don't bat an eyelid to)
Any recommendations from similar others as to which MODERN bayonet bulbs aren't going to be a waste of money and do my head in?
Encouraging to see the many responses to this subject - and many thanks everybody :)
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I've made friends with a nerdy person who is also sensitive to lighting. He sent me https://www.derlichtpeter.de/testergebnisse/ which lists various products by various standards and colour codes them.
You'll need to let Google translate it from the original German but may give you some ideas on what to avoid even if the "better" metrics may still have problems for some of it.
There is other sources of info but I can't find the link which said cost is not a 100% guarantee of non flicker.
A good link is http://www.archlighting.com/technology/leds-fighting-flicker_o which explains how the flicker happens.
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Warm and friendly is hard to quantify, beyond the obvious flicker, colour temperature and colour-rendering index.
I reckon one of the more subtle effects with LED lighting, particularly when dimmable, is that the colour temperature is independent of brightness. We're used to natural light sources that approximate a black body - with the colour temperature increasing hand in hand with brightness. LED or fluorescent sources that look fine with the brightness turned up to 11 can feel distinctly unnatural when dimmed down and the colour temperature doesn't change.
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Fortunately I'm not living in a confusin' dimmable lighting environment - it's off or on - SIMPLE old skool home :)
However I feel like an alien :-[
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I have seen your photographs. I bet you’re a sucker for a full spectrum emulating a black body. Although I’ve been happy with my GE CFLs mentioned above (unlike most CFLs), they are still a far cry from the sheer light quality of a tungsten lamp. Colours look weird, the relative brightness of things is off, and colour photographs are impossible to fix (at least with my knowledge of Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture).
I think tungsten is impossible to beat for friendliness for a whole host of reasons. Just a shame it’s so power-hungry.
I’m curious to know if LEDs are appreciably better than CFLs for light quality, but I can’t be bothered doing a deep dive on this like I did with the GE CFLs.
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We've just done some flicker SCIENCE with a set of cheap shitty white USB LEDs from China.
With a 50% duty cycle square wave, barakta can perceive flicker in waving fingers up to about 2-2.5kHz. This is the same frequency where she stops getting visual artefacts from looking around the room. 3kHz is okay.
While I can tolerate 100Hz if I fixate on a stationary point (including the source itself), barakta can't. We hypothesise that her broken vestibular-occular reflex means she perceives stroboscopic artefacts from every little bit of head motion - heads being held in place by muscle tension under normal circumstances, so presumably subject to noise.
I'd say 300Hz was the point where it's no longer problematic for me. I can just about perceive flicker at up to 1kHz in my peripheral vision, and up to 2kHz by waving things around.
Obviously things are going to be improved somewhat if there's some partially-successful smoothing going on, and only the worst LED fixtures have no smoothing at all. But then the decent ones shouldn't have mains frequency ripple anyway.
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But then the decent ones shouldn't have mains frequency ripple anyway.
Many CFLs have a periodic flicker around mains frequency. That is, they flicker for a second or two, then stabilise for maybe ten seconds, then flicker again, cyclically. Do you know what causes that?
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But then the decent ones shouldn't have mains frequency ripple anyway.
Many CFLs have a periodic flicker around mains frequency. That is, they flicker for a second or two, then stabilise for maybe ten seconds, then flicker again, cyclically. Do you know what causes that?
Not something I've really noticed. Maybe a thermal effect? Some are certainly worse when they first start up.
We evicted some CFL's from barakta's mum's house because they were cutting out for a fraction of a second every minute or so in order to sample the ambient light with a sensor. I suppose that might just about be acceptable in an outside light, but... :hand:
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very much a case of you get what you pay. i initially bought LED GU10s for our new house online from LEDsRus or some such. They worked but blew quickly. I then moved to Philips properly branded ones. Much better colour (according to my wife) and none have blown in 18 months at all. We tend to have warm in the living areas and cool in the study.
Although we have just put a daylight box into the study for my wife who is locked in doing her dissertation!
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I'm bemused by all these people who consider tungsten light to be warm and friendly, I think its vile, sickly grossly un-natural light. Before the days of commonly available modern technology lamps, my fave light source was certain metal halide lamps, but now we have lots of LEDs from shitty cheap ones, to top quality ones, we are spoilt for choice. What we get from the sun is proper light, and surely we need to be matching that as well as we can. That does not mean 2700K...
My opinion of people who think they are clever because they've found a source of tungsten lamps to last out their lifetime, and will "beat the system" is not based on the fact that they are wrong, which they undoubtedly are, but because they are being selfish and ignorant and deliberately harming others by their profligate waste of energy and CO2 emissions.
When gas lighting was first introduced, people said the colour was awful, not like these nice candles that we've been using for ages. Can't people actually learn to make some simple technical assessment of what light they need, and buy a modern efficient light source that correctly lights the space in question? The maths proving that tungsten lamps are a gross waste of money, are blindingly clear. CFLs were a stop-gap, and while I've still got a few, none of them are cheap and nasty market stall types, but they still save money over tungsten, and properly chosen provide adequate light.
And final rant-ette, what is it with these new-ish "dim to warm" LED lamps? The whole good thing about dimmable LED lamps is that they keep the same colour temperature throughout the dimming range, rather than replicated a faintly glowing bit of hot wire. I do NOT want an LED lamp to go sickly orange when I dim it!
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I love the new LED bulbs and have both warm and cool lighting. I don't see any advantage in tungsten.
Some years back I started hoovering up and restoring old British made lights, mostly industrial and task lights to use in my barn conversion. Many of these were heat damaged over the years by careless owners using excessive wattages but LED bulbs don't do that. You can do all sorts of stuff with them. I've lots of lights, individually switched so I can have any level or direction, I don't do dimmable, either.
While I can see flicker in fluourescent tubes/bulbs I can't with the LED bulbs - I just checked.
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I don't think it is fair to say everyone who prefers tungsten is selfish. There is lots of research suggesting that for some people other light sources are more problematic and exacerbate visual stress and other visual problems.
I sometimes say I prefer tungsten or halogen cos I know those are unlikely to make me ill (with visible or invisible flicker) unlike CFLs, magnetic flurries or LEDs...
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I'm bemused by all these people who consider tungsten light to be warm and friendly, I think its vile, sickly grossly un-natural light.
It’s warmer than daylight, but traditional and natural sources of night-time light are much warmer still: fires, candles, and oil lamps.
Colour temperature does not matter much except for the initial impression, because your eye quickly adjusts to any colour temperature from candlelight to overcast sky.
The problem with CFLs (and, I strongly suspect, LEDs) is that – in addition to the annoying artefacts (flickering, buzzing, etc.) mentioned in this thread, which are depressingly common – the spectral power distribution has dark chunks, bright chunks, and other unnatural features in its curve. The lamps do not remotely emulate black-body radiation. Your eye cannot properly compensate for this and therefore the colours and brightness of known objects appear strange.
The efficiency claims are exaggerated by these spectral flaws too, because you need more light energy for a given impression of brightness and good visibility. Try sewing under CFLs. To avoid eye-strain you need many more ‘equivalent watts’ than the actual wattage of a tungsten bulb.
Photographers notice these problems more obviously because colour photographs taken under CFLs are hard or impossible to post-process to a natural appearance.
On efficiency, the claims are exaggerated by another effect: often a room with the lights on is a heated room. This is certainly true for most of the winter for most of Europe. And even if ceilings are not an ideal location to put heaters, they heat the room above. Therefore in blocks of flats, the net loss of energy from tungsten bulbs must be low in cool weather.
Of course there are more-efficient energy sources to heat a home than electricity (though many Parisian flats nonetheless have electric heating), but the heating effects of tungsten bulbs still reduce waste. Some of their heat output is put to good use.
Another consideration is that of scale. Tungsten bulbs account for very little of your total energy footprint. Anyone who drives a car bigger than a Clio – in fact, anyone with a car at all – would save a lifetime of tungsten bulb energy in a few months by making a smarter choice there. British houses, like French ones, are with rare exception appallingly insulated. Americans blow staggering amounts of energy on air conditioning that is only required by bad architecture and bad culture. Desktop computers are pointless energy hogs in 99% of homes in 2017. Airline travel even once a year makes a mockery of your attempts to save a few joules with a CFL in the bathroom.
Speaking of which, few things are dumber than a slow-warming CFL in the bathroom or toilet, which I see in most British houses these days. The energy saved is trivial, the CFL soon dies because it’s not designed for two-minute cycles, and you can neither see to shave properly nor go for a quick pee.
I have used CFLs in the living room, kitchen, and one bedroom, where they make sense in my case. And I’d like to use LEDs in my new flat, assuming they’re any good. But tungsten is not as bad as made out and has its place anyway.
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While I can see flicker in fluourescent tubes/bulbs I can't with the LED bulbs - I just checked.
The flicker in LED lights varies enormously. Some have none. Some are terrible.
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Speaking of which, few things are dumber than a slow-warming CFL in the bathroom or toilet, which I see in most British houses these days. The energy saved is trivial, the CFL soon dies because it’s not designed for two-minute cycles, and you can neither see to shave properly nor go for a quick pee.
No, that's the one place a slow-warming CFL does make sense: You don't want to be blinded when you go for a pee in the night, but you do want the light to get decently bright when you're washing (or cleaning the bath).
Obviously there's no reason an LED couldn't be software controlled to achieve the same effect (or a more intelligent version thereof), but if anything LED drivers tend to behave in the opposite way - starting at full brightness and then dimming as the regulator approaches its thermal limits.
My CFLs are getting retired to the bathroom as they're replaced by LEDs.
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As I recall the main reason tungsten bulbs were phase out is that - just like fossil fuels - we begin to run out of tungsten..
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The new SMD LEDs, which have 2 or 4 "filaments" to resemble a tungsten bulb, are another leap forward in the technology. The colour of the Osram ones is a bit too warm for some uses but they are highly efficient and look good, on or off.
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The new SMD LEDs, which have 2 or 4 "filaments" to resemble a tungsten bulb, are another leap forward in the technology. The colour of the Osram ones is a bit too warm for some uses but they are highly efficient and look good, on or off.
...as long as the drivers aren't flickery shit. I've not met them in the flesh, but I expect Osram stand a chance of doing this sort of thing properly.
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I imagine the Wilko or TCP ones are not as good.
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There's a cafe down the road which is entirely lit by the fuckers. Can't tell what brand they are, but it's a 100Hz disco. :hand:
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You can see 100Hz? I had real trouble with CRTs that didn't go to 85Hz (some work monitors only managed 76Hz, which was blatantly flickery) but I'm ok with LED lamps.
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With my peripheral vision, certainly.
This stuff makes some people ill (see rest of thread).
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Staying with a friend, her living room and half her kitchen are lit with cheap LED lights, 100Hz flicker yuck.
Fortunately she is a physicist and knows about my lighting fun so when I mentioned it she switched to side lights which are 1x slightly less flickering LED (looks like 200Hz and more of a ripple) and one which is not LED which was not flickering... And in the kitchen she's not yet replaced 3x halogens.
She couldn't see the flicker at all. I do wonder if some people are getting headaches off them though.
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200Hz seems unlikely. Probably 100Hz with some smoothing (better duty cycle).
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That makes sense, it was still strobing but not with as hard lines as the other ones, also it was only 50% of the illumination in the room.
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They are replacing street lamps with LED. One day we will get all nostalgic for Sodium Orange!
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I already am. I sometime have trouble telling if I've got traffic behind me or just street lights with the new ones.
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No, please do not bring back sodium orange. Light should be light, not murky.
Elsewhere, someone is talking about migraines brought on by the flickering effect of traction poles casting shadow/light patterns when looking out of a train window. Similar problem?
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Astronomers are nostalgic for sodium orange, which they can largely filter out.
Broad spectrum LEDs pollutes the night sky with glare which can't be filtered and contains enough blue to scupper night vision.
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Yes, I'm aware that astronomers prefer sodium orange – though surely most of all they prefer darkness. Are LEDs worse in this respect than other 'white' streetlights (mercury, fluorescent, tungsten, etc)?
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TBH it's a long time since I've seen a mercury street light!
Astronomers tend either to observe at, or close to home, where they are at the mercy of whatever their municipality throws at them, or select some distant dark sky site, where they must hire or bring hefty, bulky kit.
David observes from home, where scopes are fixed to the ground and immediate shelter is available should the weather turn. Sky glow is getting worse all the time.
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Yes, I'm aware that astronomers prefer sodium orange – though surely most of all they prefer darkness. Are LEDs worse in this respect than other 'white' streetlights (mercury, fluorescent, tungsten, etc)?
There were stories all over the BBC a couple of weeks back about how many residents in US cities like Washington D.C. and NY are no longer able to sleep due to the blue LED streetlights that they now have. I know there will always be whingers about any change like that but in this case I can see a real problem in there.
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I recently bought two of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01II9VPNA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For the bedroom. For me they give a lovely warm glow (Very warm) if a bit dim. I suspect that they are of the cheaper import variety, but I've not noticed any flicker. I'll experiment with various video cameras.
Will also have to wait to see how long they last.
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They are replacing street lamps with LED. One day we will get all nostalgic for Sodium Orange!
They installed LED streetlights around here a while ago. They match the colour temperature of my bike lights, which is novel.
The light appears cold, but it's not like sodium is pleasant either.
They seem to do an admirable job of illuminating things on the road.
Main objection is that they've used half as many poles as previously, with the fixtures having a wider spread. This means more dark shadowy pavements. I can't imagine it helps with light pollution either, although the optics do seem to have a very sharp cut-off.
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Elsewhere, someone is talking about migraines brought on by the flickering effect of traction poles casting shadow/light patterns when looking out of a train window. Similar problem?
Seems likely. Citation needed, but I believe photosensitive epilepsy was first discovered through the combination of horses and avenues.
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There were stories all over the BBC a couple of weeks back about how many residents in US cities like Washington D.C. and NY are no longer able to sleep due to the blue LED streetlights that they now have. I know there will always be whingers about any change like that but in this case I can see a real problem in there.
Lighting fixtures should be installed so as not to shine light directly into windows. Barndoors (or whatever they're called in a street lighting context) and thoughtful placement of lamp posts aren't rocket science.
As for general urban glow keeping people awake, curtains and blinds aren't rocket science either.
In the days before smartphones, when torch batteries were expensive, children needed spill from streetlights for their illicit reading after bedtime activities...
It (along with the urban astronomy issue) does raise the interesting question of whether a broad spectrum is actually a good idea for street lighting. LEDs can be made in any colour you like, and perhaps a monochromatic green (hitting the peak response of the human eye) or a night-vision-friendly red would have merits, if not public support.
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They are replacing street lamps with LED. One day we will get all nostalgic for Sodium Orange!
They installed LED streetlights around here a while ago. They match the colour temperature of my bike lights, which is novel.
The light appears cold, but it's not like sodium is pleasant either.
They seem to do an admirable job of illuminating things on the road.
Main objection is that they've used half as many poles as previously, with the fixtures having a wider spread. This means more dark shadowy pavements. I can't imagine it helps with light pollution either, although the optics do seem to have a very sharp cut-off.
I don't think these LEDs flicker (their predecessors bloody do).
I find the dark shadowyness very difficult cos it makes the lighting uneven so I can't get a sense of a consistent light level. I'd rather they didn't bother, or indeed the red/green suggestion you made else thread. Oh and they're only on one set of pavements so clearly for cars not pedestrians.
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Streetlight Fight in Rome: Golden Glow vs. Harsh LED (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/europe/rome-streetlights-led-lights.html)
a plan to replace the city’s yellow sodium streetlights with cheaper, more environmentally friendly, white LED lamps is, for some, not simple modernization, but sheer heresy.
However, I am pleased to say they now turn off the sodium light in my French hameau late at night. It has just the one. Then there is only star and moonlight in the sky.