blasterman
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2008
- Messages
- 1,802
I noticed lately that a new style of LED street light was popping up in a local town, and these were quite a bit different than the ones I've seen deployed in other areas. It's also the first large scale roll-out I've seen of the LED fixtures used for several miles of roadway.
First thing I noticed about the new lights was the color. My camera balanced in RAW at about 4500k, and visually I'd put them aroudn there. You can see in the picture the oncoming halogen headlamps aren't an extreme difference in color showing how warm these lamps are. No cool-white 'blues' here. What's also interesting is each fixture only has 36 heads - Obviously I can't tell what brand of emitters are, but that is certainly the lowest number of discrete emitters I've seen in such a fixture. Pretty obvious were aren't dealing with under-driven XP-E's.
The only negative was oddly the color. Something was 'off' in regards to the color rendition, and I have a suspicion these LED's are the infamous 'ANSI' spec'd versions which sacrifice CRI for increased efficiency. I have all brands of neutral white emitters laying around and none are as 'flat' as these lamps were with the exception of a ANSI spec'd neutral white rebel.
These lights were used to replace mostly mercury vapor fixtures, and the corresponding intensity is very similiar, although they have a far more even spread. In that respect, somebody did their homework. I posted some shots awhile back of some much brighter fixtures used down-town for evaluation, and although much brighter the color was around 6500-7000k and far more annoying.
First thing I noticed about the new lights was the color. My camera balanced in RAW at about 4500k, and visually I'd put them aroudn there. You can see in the picture the oncoming halogen headlamps aren't an extreme difference in color showing how warm these lamps are. No cool-white 'blues' here. What's also interesting is each fixture only has 36 heads - Obviously I can't tell what brand of emitters are, but that is certainly the lowest number of discrete emitters I've seen in such a fixture. Pretty obvious were aren't dealing with under-driven XP-E's.
The only negative was oddly the color. Something was 'off' in regards to the color rendition, and I have a suspicion these LED's are the infamous 'ANSI' spec'd versions which sacrifice CRI for increased efficiency. I have all brands of neutral white emitters laying around and none are as 'flat' as these lamps were with the exception of a ANSI spec'd neutral white rebel.
These lights were used to replace mostly mercury vapor fixtures, and the corresponding intensity is very similiar, although they have a far more even spread. In that respect, somebody did their homework. I posted some shots awhile back of some much brighter fixtures used down-town for evaluation, and although much brighter the color was around 6500-7000k and far more annoying.