Author Topic: Sign of the times  (Read 5973 times)

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Offline PlainNameTopic starter

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Sign of the times
« on: May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pm »
As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like.

It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2021, 09:40:10 pm »
Very true. The whiter light from LEDs is also bad for wildlife and astronomy.
 
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Offline eti

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2021, 10:46:18 pm »
The "ECO" nuts have screwed society with their agendas. I don't mean that renewable energy is not great, I mean that the OBSESSION with LED everything is a political  ego massage.
 

Offline PlainNameTopic starter

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2021, 11:01:07 pm »
Gotta say that brighter, whiter, longer-lasting lights with rechargable batteries that pack a huge punch and don't self-discharge certainly has me railing against the eco-freaks.

Er... or perhaps not :)
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2021, 11:12:09 pm »
I still remember when it went from white mercury vapor lights to orange high pressure sodium in the early-mid 80s. I never did like high pressure sodium, in my opinion they should have just stayed with mercury. HPS is more efficient on paper but I never thought the ugly orange light worked very well to actually light things up, it just sprayed glare everywhere and the scene looked dull and dark. The green spectral line in a mercury discharge makes vegetation glow.

Low pressure sodium is monochromatic and is useful for astronomy but HPS is sufficiently broadband that filtering it isn't really much easier than white light, it just makes everything look icky and orange.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2021, 11:13:56 pm by james_s »
 

Offline AntiProtonBoy

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2021, 01:02:23 am »
I like LED lighting. Sodium vapour lamps were just awful in terms of colour.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2021, 02:06:41 am »
The orange glow from low pressure neon lighting is a godsend when eating a donner kebab late at night while walking down the street. I was shocked the first time I ever saw one in colour.

On a separate note, my town recently took the local electric company to task for installing brighter, colder streetlights. They made them replace them free of charge.

 

Online floobydust

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2021, 02:42:07 am »
olde fuddy-duddies remember mercury blue streetlighting, and fuddy-duddies remember sodium halide.

Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project
25,320 cobra heads replaced as crapola Leotek which did not last "premature burning out".
$3.9M worth of LED units, $5.2M installation and then a lawsuit over it all. I'll bet sodium would've been much cheaper lol.

LED streetlighting has an anemic dim glow, dark splotches on the road, fake specs leaving civil engineers thinking they can light up more with less.
 

Online BrianHG

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2021, 02:54:21 am »
...fake specs...

Yup...
Too bad the LUXIM plasma light (LEP) was never wide adopted as a standard and failed, though more expensive, they visually look better with near perfect CRI, double the efficiency of LEDs and since you aren't over-driving cheap Chinese leds, they last a lot longer.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2021, 07:57:22 am »
The "ECO" nuts have screwed society with their agendas. I don't mean that renewable energy is not great, I mean that the OBSESSION with LED everything is a political  ego massage.
It all comes down to saving money. If they can save electricity and the lamps don't have to be replaced so often, fewer people need to be employed to maintain them.

It's easy to fix though. In areas where it's a problem, just use yellow LEDs, with a narrowband spectrum.
 

Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2021, 08:36:14 am »
As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like.

It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow.

Back in the day, in Oz, the glow was always white from colour corrected mercury vapour lamps, & some incandescents, then those godawful sodium crap things took over.

They were still very rare in Western Australia when I went to the UK in 1971, but all over the place there.
The rule for cars driving in town had just changed to "dipped beams", but very few Brit drivers did that, driving around on their parking lights, instead, as they had for decades.

If a car had no yellow in its paint colour, it was pretty much invisible.
The same was the case for people's clothes, from the driver's point of view.
I nearly got knocked over by a dark blue "invisible taxi" on one occasion, on a zebra crossing!

On my return home, I noticed that the scourge of sodium had started to take over, there, too!

On another trip to the UK, in 1974" I parked my pink Ford Cortina hire car in a smallish car park, & went to visit some people.
On my return, after dark, I couldn't find a pink Cortina, but there was a yellow one!

Not really that much of a hassle, as the key ring had the Reg number on it, but it had me going for a while.


 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2021, 10:22:01 am »
As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like.

It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow.

What does that make those of us who remember the bug-light yellow glow from low pressure sodium lamps?
 

Offline PlainNameTopic starter

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #12 on: May 14, 2021, 11:31:08 am »
boring olde phartes?
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2021, 07:04:39 pm »
olde fuddy-duddies remember mercury blue streetlighting, and fuddy-duddies remember sodium halide.

Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project
25,320 cobra heads replaced as crapola Leotek which did not last "premature burning out".
$3.9M worth of LED units, $5.2M installation and then a lawsuit over it all. I'll bet sodium would've been much cheaper lol.

LED streetlighting has an anemic dim glow, dark splotches on the road, fake specs leaving civil engineers thinking they can light up more with less.

Good quality LED streetlighting produces nice quality light with good optical control and long life. The problem is not LED streetlighting, the problem is CHEAP crappy luminaires that don't meet specs and don't live up to quoted lifespans. Leotek is cheap crap, this is like buying the cheapest LED bulb you can find at the dollar store and complaining that LED bulbs are no good based on it. If you buy a good quality product you stand a good chance of getting good results. If you buy the cheapest thing you can find, well, sometimes you get what you pay for.

LED is the future of lighting though, development has virtually ceased on all other lighting technologies. A friend of mine who works in the industry went to a lighting industry trade show about 10 years ago and said that absolutely everything on the floor was LED, it was like nothing else existed. Previously there was fluorescent, electrodeless induction, and various HID technologies but all of that was gone. It isn't too surprising though, LED can provide longer life with less maintenance, better lumen maintenance, less color shift, better uniformity between luminaires, shorter (as in none) warmup time to full brightness, instant restrike after a power failure, more color options, better optical control and many other advantages. That doesn't mean there isn't garbage on the market, but superior products do exist.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2021, 07:10:53 pm by james_s »
 
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Offline langwadt

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2021, 07:13:12 pm »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2021, 07:30:12 pm »
It's funny to hear about nostalgia for high pressure sodium, I guess it's younger folks who don't remember the nice clean white light we had before those awful orange things replaced everything in the name of energy efficiency. Now we're back to nice clean white light, in the name of even better energy efficiency. I hated HPS when they initially took over and I don't miss them one bit now that they're going away.

They will change the light sources in particular scenes for filming movies, I remember seeing color correcting gels wrapped around streetlights in Los Angeles a few times when I was there, left over from filming scenes. If a director wants to capture the HPS look digitally filtering the footage is now an option too.
 
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Online bd139

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2021, 07:49:43 pm »
Oh holy crap this one annoyed me. They replaced all our gentle orange sodium lights with LEDs a few years back. I had to change the curtains in the end for blackout ones because it’s like having prison arc searchlights chasing you at night otherwise.

But a year down the line I don’t even notice any more  :-//
 

Online Gyro

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2021, 08:28:04 pm »
One of my earlier memories is lying on the back seat of an Austin A30, feeling horribly travel sick, watching the orange low pressure Sodium lamps drift by.  >:D
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Offline Rick Law

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2021, 08:31:04 pm »
boring olde phartes?

It's funny to hear about nostalgia for high pressure sodium, I guess it's younger folks who don't remember the nice clean white light we had before those awful orange things replaced everything in the name of energy efficiency.
...
...

I recall reading an article that highway/street lights in white is easier for older people to see.  I can't find that article anymore.

But, it makes sense -- white comprises of the entire visible color spectrum.  Anyone with decreased sensitivity to any particular color can have the rest of the color spectrum to rely on.

The most common color blindness is red-green (8% of male, 0.5% female for Northern European descent according to Wikipedia), next to that is blue-yellow.  Yellow, orange, amber are colors are a mix of red and green, so it is unfriendly to decreased sensitivity to red-green.  The traffic light colors are even less friendly to them, yet red-green insensitivity appears to be the most common.

It may not make any difference to most of us, but I guess only until someone runs over your dog because the street is lid with yellowish lamps.
 

Online bd139

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2021, 08:33:46 pm »
One of my earlier memories is lying on the back seat of an Austin A30, feeling horribly travel sick, watching the orange low pressure Sodium lamps drift by.  >:D

Reading that instantly triggered a similar memory here. Drifting off watching the old green but slightly blue traffic lights pass by from the back of my father’s Ford cortina that smelled of vomit after my sister had eaten too many fruit pastels and let them go  :palm:
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2021, 08:51:33 pm »
I recall reading an article that highway/street lights in white is easier for older people to see.  I can't find that article anymore.

But, it makes sense -- white comprises of the entire visible color spectrum.  Anyone with decreased sensitivity to any particular color can have the rest of the color spectrum to rely on.

The most common color blindness is red-green (8% of male, 0.5% female for Northern European descent according to Wikipedia), next to that is blue-yellow.  Yellow, orange, amber are colors are a mix of red and green, so it is unfriendly to decreased sensitivity to red-green.  The traffic light colors are even less friendly to them, yet red-green insensitivity appears to be the most common.

It may not make any difference to most of us, but I guess only until someone runs over your dog because the street is lid with yellowish lamps.

There's also a difference in sensitivity between photopic and scotopic vision, more bluish wavelengths have an advantage at low light levels. I think the real issue though is that so many things absorb orange light which leads to the effect of a bright source spraying light everywhere but the scene is not really lit up very well. The source itself looks very bright due to orange being close to the sensitivity peak of the eye but that just serves to drown out all the orange absorbing objects in the scene and produce a bunch of glare. There has also been a tendency to over-light, high light levels do not improve visibility over more modest levels, they just create contrast between brighter and darker areas. Modern regulations requiring full-cutoff luminaires that do not emit any light above 90 degrees also create a problem of needing more of them to create even illumination and even then you end up with bright pools under the source with dark spaces between. IMO they could achieve more effective lighting while still mitigating light pollution by using lower intensity sources and focus on providing even illumination. Less total light but more of it doing something useful.
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2021, 09:12:00 pm »
Oh holy crap this one annoyed me. They replaced all our gentle orange sodium lights with LEDs a few years back. I had to change the curtains in the end for blackout ones because it’s like having prison arc searchlights chasing you at night otherwise.

But a year down the line I don’t even notice any more  :-//

The worst is cycling in the evening. Everyone has the landing lights of an airport strapped to their handlebars and pointed straight ahead.
Hoarder of 8-bit Commodore relics and 1960s Tektronix 500-series stuff. Unconventional interior decorator.
 
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Online bd139

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2021, 09:36:13 pm »
Yeah that's a massive problem in London as a driver. While I certainly respect cyclists (as a former cyclist) it really annoys the hell out of my when someone comes flying at me on the opposite side of the road with a frigging strobe light going on. I can see you fine if it doesn't flash.  >:(
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #23 on: May 15, 2021, 03:53:20 am »
It's funny to hear about nostalgia for high pressure sodium, I guess it's younger folks who don't remember the nice clean white light we had before those awful orange things replaced everything in the name of energy efficiency. Now we're back to nice clean white light, in the name of even better energy efficiency. I hated HPS when they initially took over and I don't miss them one bit now that they're going away.

Well I'm 35 and at least were I lived most of my life in Portugal I saw both, the High Pressure Sodium that leave that glow in Orange, the Mercury Vapour ones with their white spectrum and now the LED. And there is still places where in the same road you find the 3 types. I hate the HPS in terms of colour but the reality is that I have the impression when driving that it illuminates the street better than the Mercury Vapour, thanks to the light spill.

LED if it is a good one is something out of the world, beating the light spill perception (or reality) of HPS and having the white glow of the Mercury Vapour ones.

Here in Shenzhen where I'm currently living, the street behind my house is all HPS Yellow/Orange and the main street LED White and the LED beat in terms of illumination and pleasing to the eyes.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2021, 03:58:18 am by Black Phoenix »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2021, 06:21:21 am »
It's certainly going to depend on where you are. Here in the USA mercury vapor absolutely dominated street lighting from about the late 1950s up into the early 1980s. Some areas used clear lamps and others used phosphor coated color corrected lamps, some seemed to use whatever they had on hand at the time. LPS (SOX) that was extremely common in the UK and Europe never really caught on here, there were pockets of them in a few specific areas, particularly in the vicinity of observatories but I've never seen one on a public road up here in the Northwest. HPS started to appear sometime in the 70s and the changeover really picked up steam in the early 80s until it had absolutely dominated everywhere. Metal halide was widely used in parking lots and interior lighting of large stores and warehouses from the 80s on but it was never widely used in streetlighting. There may still be pockets of mercury streetlights in some areas, there were still thousands of incandescent streetlights from the 1920s-50s in the Los Angeles area and a few other places as recently as about 5 years ago when the last company stopped making the special 6.6A series lamps. I'm sure pockets of HPS will be around for decades more until the supply of replacement lamps dries up.
 


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