What does your view look like?

[tabacco]

Nothing super-fancy for me, just the side yard of the house (taken from outside to remove window glare and screens) :

[Thrik]

Splendid, I see summer has truly kicked off in the UK so I thought I'd update with my latest view:

[Thrik]

And here we are at the end of July...

[vimes]

It's a pretty nice view though: the buildings and their layout are pretty interesting and typical of what I imagine the UK to be.

[Thrik]

Haha, sure it's a quaint little blend of really old buildings and pretty new ones. Someone said it reminds them of City 17 — not sure what to make of that!

[Thrik]

Here's how things are looking in the depths of winter:

Really wish I'd bothered to set up some kind of tripod system so I could get the same shot over different seasons and do some kind of fancy blending shit. Maybe this year.

[Jake]

My beautiful view!

[toblix]

SPOILER Next Telltale game to be called «The Walking Deerad.»

[melmer]

Lolz, I spotted that

The shit on your desk is far more interesting then the shit on my desk... Actually, tell a lie, the shit on my desk is pretty rad. I have a plastic pirate sword (which came with the job), an arcade cabinet money bank with space invader game (no batteries), batman eau de toilette, a bacon flavoured air freshener, bacon flavoured lip balm, bacon flavoured tooth paste, a nail brush, some 18 month out of date biscuits, lollipops, my 'captain awesome' mug and a giant cheque for £5000

[Laxan]

Britney Spears postcard was a nice touch.

[elmuerte]

What jobs requires a plastic pirate sword? You're a professional insult sword fighter?

[melmer]

I should be!!!! alas no. I might see if i can work that in to my contract though, so if anyone verbally assaults the company i will be called upon for witty retorts.

I am actually spectacular at insulting people, this could really be my calling in life

[melmer]

AVAST

[Lu]

Oh, I'm shaking, I'm shaking.

[melmer]

My skills with a plastic pirate sword are highly venerated. En Garde! Touché!

I would post a picture of my view, but it would just be a picture of closed blinds, as i sit directly opposite the sun between the months of Oct - Apr until the sun actually rises high enough in the sky that i don't catch it.

In fact this is not an unfair representation:

[Gormongous]

Maybe you should set up a chair and cut off one of your legs, instead.

I'd post my view, but I work in a windowless office and my apartment looks out on the nearby Red Cross parking lot where drug deals go down all the time, so maybe not.

[Dontwalk]

Thanks, sodium-vapor lamp. (and privacy film because this is right on a busy street)

[elmuerte]

looks like the end of the world is going on outside

[brkl]

That reminds me of Glasgow. Just this nightmarish orange tint to everything at night. It made recognizing faces difficult.

[osmosisch]

I love the fragile colours that the sky turns here in winter.

[Dontwalk]

That reminds me of Glasgow. Just this nightmarish orange tint to everything at night. It made recognizing faces difficult.

It’s interesting to hear you say that—they must be using low-pressure sodium vapor lamps there too. I naively assumed that most residential street lighting would be low-pressure sodium lamps worldwide, unless their city council had been conned into buying LEDs, because they are cheap, efficient, and last a long time—and it’s all I’ve ever seen in my travels. Now I’m curious to know what kind of street lighting is used around the world.

Other types of lighting make sense in city centers where you have people walking around all night and going to bars and clubs, but not in residential/rural/commercial locations really.

They put out almost 200 lumens/watt, but are completely monochromatic. No blue/green/UV light, so they don’t attract insects.

High-pressure sodium lamps have better color rendering (closer to an incandescent bulb) but have a higher color temperature, and are about 25% less efficient, putting out about 150 lumens/watt.

Metal halide lamps have even better color rendering, but start to have some light in the blue spectrum, and are even less efficient, at about 100 lumens/watt.

LEDs on the other hand try to replicate daylight either using RGB LEDs, or more commonly now, “white” LEDs, which are really just blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor coating. This means they appear to be a “daylight white” (5000–6500K) but actually have a large blue spike in their spectral response.

Current LEDs in production peak at about 100 lumens/watt (typically more like 70 lumens/watt) and are limited to about 100 watts maximum due to the amount of heat they produce. For reference, a typical low-pressure sodium lamp operates around 120 watts, and puts out 200 lumens/watt.

While LEDs produce less heat than other lamps, it’s concentrated into a very small area, and is more problematic.

As a result of this, retrofitted street lamps often suffer from color shifting and a loss of light output because they cook the phosphor due to insufficient cooling.

More modern fixtures designed for LEDs don’t suffer from that issue, but have proven to be unreliable thus far—and the only way they are worth their high upfront cost, is if they last the claimed 10–15 years.

On a more personal note, I replaced about half the lighting in my home with the best Philips LEDs last year, and more than half of them have failed already. They happily replace them under warranty, but the whole point of LEDs was their supposed efficiency and longevity. Color rendering and light output still needs a lot of work too—they were such a waste of money, and I would be very skeptical of any longevity claims made by LED manufacturers now.

It is claimed that LED street lighting produces less light pollution because they are highly directional lights and don’t send much light upwards at all. That may be true if you are only considering astronomy, but the goal of LED manufacturers seems to be to create a “daylight” type of light, and I’m sure you can imagine the kind of problems that 24 hour daylight will cause.

In more rural areas it will affect wildlife, and in residential areas, it will interfere with melatonin production & sleep. There’s a reason that blue LEDs on electronics are bad, and that you shouldn’t be looking at a computer screen right before you go to sleep. If you aren’t doing anything color-critical on your computer, you may want to look into using f.lux.

LED street lighting also kills your night vision, unlike those low-pressure sodium lamps, and causes glare problems for drivers at night if the fixtures are not properly designed or installed. (most are not)

Due to low-pressure sodium vapor lamps being monochromatic, they are also much safer for driving aside from the glare issues with LED, because it improves contrast at night, and allows the light to penetrate rain & fog with minimal dispersion, so you always have a clear view.

If my city wanted to switch from using low-pressure sodium lamps to LEDs to give the appearance of “going green” I would actively oppose it.

…and now I really want to play SimCity for some reason, even though I’m quite sure it won’t go that in-depth with the city planning.

[Nappi]

On a more personal note, I replaced about half the lighting in my home with the best Philips LEDs last year, and more than half of them have failed already. They happily replace them under warranty, but the whole point of LEDs was their supposed efficiency and longevity. Color rendering and light output still needs a lot of work too—they were such a waste of money, and I would be very skeptical of any longevity claims made by LED manufacturers now.

These? Interestingly enough, we have been aging those, along with various other LED retrofit lamps, at work for 1.5 to 2 years now, and to my knowledge, none of them have failed yet.

The excellent luminous efficacy of low-pressure Sodium-vapor lamps has — of course — everything to do with its monochromatic nature which is also the reason why its color rendering index is pure zero. As far as I know high-pressure sodium lamps are more common in Finland. I haven't paid much attention to street lighting business and I don't know what the trend will be now that Mercury-vapor lamps will be banned.

[Dontwalk]

These?

We have been aging those, along with various other LED retrofit lamps, where I work for 1.5 to 2 years now, and to my knowledge, none of them have failed yet.

Those lamps have been fine, though the light quality could be better and they aren’t used as often here, but their GU10 lamps have been incredibly unreliable for me—even the newest ones with more efficient LEDs and a revised heatsink design.

The last time one died, I replaced the 6W LED (“50W equivalent”) with an old 50W halogen while waiting for another replacement, and it was startling how much better the light quality was from it.

These were not cheap either—equivalent to $30 each. It’s a huge energy saving when you go from a fixture that used 200W and now only needs 24W, but that only pays off if the bulbs are reliable, and the light quality is good enough that you won’t want to replace them when something better comes along.

Maybe it was my fault for now having done the proper research, but when the bulbs are being praised as “true replacements” you shouldn’t expect to have to do research before making a purchase. Now that I have done a lot of reading on the subject, I wouldn’t use LEDs for anything other than accent lighting, at least not until they have the CRI rating above 95% at 2700–3000K (which better CFL lamps seem to be approaching now) and avoid having a large spike in the blue end of the spectrum.

As far as I’m concerned now, current LED tech just exploits people that have good intentions (being “green” or saving money in the long-run) because it probably won’t pay off, and it looks like we will see considerably higher efficiency (which means better reliability) better quality light, and much lower costs within the next few years. And now there is also talk of OLED lighting coming to market.

[Nappi]

Maybe it was my fault for now having done the proper research, but when the bulbs are being praised as “true replacements” you shouldn’t expect to have to do research before making a purchase. Now that I have done a lot of reading on the subject, I wouldn’t use LEDs for anything other than accent lighting, at least not until they have the CRI rating above 95% at 2700–3000K (which better CFL lamps seem to be approaching now) and avoid having a large spike in the blue end of the spectrum.

LED replacement lamps are still a fairly new technology and there are sill a lot of issues to be solved (heat transfer being the most urgent one). There are also a lot of companies trying to exploit that "true replacement" buzz by giving false promises. So one should at least do some research before making the purchase.

By the way, the color rendering index of most CFL lamps you will find in stores is well below 95, around 80 or so. Most proper* LED lamps can reach similar values, but you should of course always check that before buying. The current definition of CRI has been under heated debate recently anyway, as the values don't always correlate that well with the subjective color rendering quality.

The large blue spike in LED spectrum is nothing when you compare it the comb spectrum of the CFL lamps. Also, the ratio between the blue peak and the phosphorus peak is not nearly as high as in the picture you linked for warm white LEDs.

* Ones from known companies such as Osram, Philips and GE are a safer bet than those that have no distinguishable company behind them.

[Dontwalk]

LED replacement lamps are still a fairly new technology and there are sill a lot of issues to be solved (heat transfer being the most urgent one). There are also a lot of companies trying to exploit that "true replacement" buzz by giving false promises. So one should at least do some research before making the purchase.

Yes, but when there are articles going around tech blogs praising the quality of them, you expect to not have to do any kind of research to buy a lamp. Most people will just pick up whatever is in their local store.

It just seems like the technology isn’t ready yet, but marketing pretends that it is.

By the way, the color rendering index of most CFL lamps you will find in stores is well below 95, around 80 or so. Most proper* LED lamps can reach similar values, but you should of course always check that before buying.

That’s true, but the lamps I purchased are rated as 93 CRI (I thought it was 95 but mis-remembered) at 5000K (we needed a couple of “daylight” lamps for one location) and the newer ones now seem to be rated at 96 CRI. Finding anything over 80 CRI with LED seems very difficult, especially if you need higher wattages. I can get a 160W equivalent CFL, but nothing above 75W in a standard bayonet/Edison fixture with LED, though it seems like 100W equivalents are on the way. The problem with these high wattage LEDs is that their efficiency also seems to drop off considerably compared to more modest lamps.

The current definition of CRI has been under heated debate recently anyway, as the values don't always correlate that well with the subjective color rendering quality.

If I recall correctly, the argument is that measuring CRI at low color temperatures is not comparable to CRI ratings for higher temperature lamps. So while a 2700K incandescent might measure 100 CRI, it’s not actually useful information, because everything looks orange under it regardless, so you can only compare CRI between bulbs at the same temperature, and CRI is likely to be higher at lower CCTs.

The large blue spike in LED spectrum is nothing when you compare it the comb spectrum of the CFL lamps. Also, the ratio between the blue peak and the phosphorus peak is not nearly as high as in the picture you linked for warm white LEDs.

Well not all CFL lamps are bad, and while the ones I own are not as good as I remembered, they aren’t terrible either, nor were they extremely expensive like LEDs are right now. Those CFLs are a perfect D50 white color too—no green/magenta tint that is common with many 5000K lamps. (CCT does not denote a specific color)

I never did get around to measuring the Philips LEDs I purchased though. (note: it just happens that the display calibration hardware I own is also capable of measuring the spectrum and CCT of other light sources—I don’t do anything light related for work purposes)

I’m all for saving energy, but it seems like we don’t have any truly good alternatives available yet—nothing comparable to the standard halogen lamp, and LEDs don’t seem to justify their cost over the better CFLs. (rather than the cheapest ones, which are terrible)