Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong)

[Ken Seefried]

From: "John Allain" <allain at panix.com>

>>>>>>>>>So given the choice, what lighting *is* good?
>>>>        
>>>>
>
>Natural white seems to be worse in traditional fluorescents, but newer
>corrected bulbs are available.
>
>Expensive stores and some art galleries like to use high temperature point
>sources, like 12V50w reflector lamps.  They may be among the whitest, and
>can be used either in quantity for an almost daylight look, or sparingly, to
>allow the blinkenlights to be prominent.
>

For many requirements like this (aquariums, hydroponics, etc), the lighting of choice is high-Kelvin Metal-Halide lighting.  With bulbs over 150W, you can get 10,000 K bulbs, and at 175W and above, you can get 14,000 K.  Bulbs go to 1000W and more.  All of these are very bright & very, very blue-white.

If you are more interested in "natural Sun-like" spectrum, there are numerous choices in VHO florescent bulbs, again in the aquarium & hydroponics world.  These are *totally* different than the florescent bulbs you get at the local hardware store.

Pretty much anything you get at, say, Home Depot, even the "aquarium bulbs" or "grow bulbs", will be noticeably inferior from a spectrum perspective.  Stick to the hydroponic or aquarium stores.

Ken