Putting the 'mental' in 'environmental'
-
Also incandescent bulbs don't put out retarded amounts of extra green light like typical CFLs do.
-
humans can obviously detect infrared radiation. Just get close to an open flame or active stove element and you'll detect tons of infrared.
-
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@danixdefcon5 said:
I sometimes wonder if everyone's buying shitty CFLs, or if I just got really lucky with my batch of CFLs. The ones I have at my apartment, which have completely replaced incandescents, turn on instantly. No warm-up period; no "it's getting bright enough to see stuff" interval... it simply turns on. The last CFL I remember having the warm-up issues is the one my mom uses at her living room, and that one must be like 10 years old now.
You're in Mexico, it says, and Wikipedia says that Mexico has 60Hz mains electricity. Unless I misunderstand how fluorescents work, they flicker at the mains frequency. Most countries have lower frequencies - 50Hz is common - which might be what causes the difference in perception.Also, the first gen energy savers were dire, which gave them a bad name. I suspect there's also a difference in quality related to price, and at least here in the UK, it's only the cheapest bulbs that are subsidised. I bought a bagful for 10p each a while ago, when the decent quality ones were £3-4 - but the unsubsidised price for the ones I got would be about £1.50. They're not woeful once they warm up, but they have a noticeable dimness at first, and even go through a period where they buzz quite loudly before they settle down.
If you want to get into the realms of pure speculation, I'd hypothesise that humans can actually detect infra-red radiation to some extent, so incandescent bulbs may really give a 'warmer' light because they emit heat.
I haven't noticed a flicker with the CFL's I have been purchasing, and none of the one's I've gotten so far have "buzzed", but even between different bulbs from the same package I have seen differences in light quality and "warm up" time. Some bulbs come on after a half second, and some come on instantly at about 1/2 power and get to full power in about 10 minutes. Also, I have some older bulbs which seem to be at close to their original brightness and newer bulbs which have dimmed to 1/2 their original brightness within months. And none of the bulbs have lived up to their supposed greater lifespans.
Using them in the summer has really cut my electric bill, but during the winter it's a wash (power saving is offset by the fact that they, unlike incadescent bulbs, do not augment my heating system).
-
@Enterprise Architect said:
Also incandescent bulbs don't put out retarded amounts of extra green light like typical CFLs do.
I have heard that said, but then I've also seen claims that decent CFLs match the visible spectrum of incandescents. It shouldn't be hard to filter out the extra green, which is why I was speculating there might be a non-visible component.
@DescentJS said:
humans can obviously detect infrared radiation. Just get close to an open flame or active stove element and you'll detect tons of infrared.
Obviously. I was suggesting that perhaps we can detect it at far lower levels than is believed to be the case.
-
Regarding slow-turn-on CFLs: I believe the earlier generation ones would take a long time to "warm up" or whatever the fuck they needed to do to reach 100% brightness. All of the regular CFLs these days I've purchased don't suffer from that anymore. However, any "special" shaped CFLs I've had to purchase (like bathroom light opaque spherical orb lights, extra large CFLs, or "dimmable" CFLs (which lick gorilla balls and more often than not flicker at a few Hz to "dim" apparently)) appear to be from the older generation. They must ship a much lower quantity of these, and still have a bunch of the old, shit ones to sell off first.
-
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@Enterprise Architect said:
Also incandescent bulbs don't put out retarded amounts of extra green light like typical CFLs do.
I have heard that said, but then I've also seen claims that decent CFLs match the visible spectrum of incandescents. It shouldn't be hard to filter out the extra green, which is why I was speculating there might be a non-visible component.
I'd love to know where you can buy these decent CFLs.
Really, some extra green isn't a big deal anyway: our eyes adjust automatically, and our cameras can be adjusted to cope too. The light spectrum from a fluorescent is more peaky though: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Phosphor_composition for some examples. This can have funky interactions with some pigments. I'm not sure, but I suspect this is why tomato sauce looks red under normal light but a nasty orange under my CFLs. One day I'll see if my camera sees this too.
-
@Enterprise Architect said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@Enterprise Architect said:
Also incandescent bulbs don't put out retarded amounts of extra green light like typical CFLs do.
I have heard that said, but then I've also seen claims that decent CFLs match the visible spectrum of incandescents. It shouldn't be hard to filter out the extra green, which is why I was speculating there might be a non-visible component.
I'd love to know where you can buy these decent CFLs.
I'd just like to know where I can get a 3-way CFL that fits in the socket of my torchiere lamp. All the ones that claim to be straight-across replacements have a fat ceramic ass just above the threads that keep the bulb from fitting into the socket.
-
Huh. We've been using CFL's all over the house for a couple years. Never even had one bad one, and I've also never had any of these issues you guys are talking about. No warm ups, no flickering. It's actually been quite pleasant, the whole house doesn't look yellow anymore post-sunset.
Honestly incandescents make my eyes hurt now. The light they produce is amazingly shitty. Just a hair above a torch.
-
You must be buying bulbs closer to daylight white balance. I've been buying bulbs that try to match 2700K incandescent, and I've been buying them at local retail, so selection is limited. The 23W Sylvanias I bought most recently are really screwy—more red than incandescent, and with loads of extra green. Somehow my eyes accept this as almost white, but it makes a lot of food look incredibly unappetizing (pizza and spaghetti come to mind). They also screw with photography unless all the bulbs happen to match. I do notice warm-up too, but it's fairly quick so it doesn't really bother me.
You shouldn't really notice flickering in even the crappiest bulbs, since it happens at 120Hz (at least in the US). This can still mess with photography at higher shutter speeds, though you're not likely to be using these speeds indoors unless you're shooting something like a basketball game. If you are, good luck! Expect both brightness and color balance to vary shot-to-shot!
I did some searching tonight, and I may order some high-quality daylight CFLs (meaning CRI >90). It would be awesome if these things turn out to be as good as they sound! The next problem will be figuring out how to buy these without having to order them online.
-
@Enterprise Architect said:
@ender said:
Does it? Don't most cheap LCDs do dynamic contrast nowadays, which dims the backlight when the picture is dark? (not that I'm endorsing the site)
I'm sure that works great if there's nothing else bright on your screen, like that obnoxious browser chrome.
Well, there's also the RGBW.
