Here is a clear Philips Retrolux 360w high pressure sodium retrofit lamp:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/153134442667

These lamps do feature glowbottle starters, but they are intended for the North American market.

Whenever I was reading people’s comments about their reactions to 52 CRI 3000K halophosphate warm white fluorescent lamps, I noticed that they often express dislike for such a phosphor formulation and color temperature. I wonder why so many people on this site have such a great disdain for such fluorescent lamps while I absolutely love their color?

They sleeves over the jaws are silicone, and they are removable. However we've never had the jaws loosen, although when holding our rare 280W SOI/H lamp, the sleeves did soften a bit 

But beware that if socket get really hot the plastic coated claw may slip. Especially when running a heavy and powerful lamp. You know what will happen next (.

Lab stands are awesome for this purpose; we have two, one for the smaller lamps and another when we want to use long lamps like 180W SOX.

Defaulting to test unknown probe start lamp base up makes sense, but it is the most inconvenient way to mount the lamp, of course. Need to use something like a lab stand, or some prop to hang the socket. For a tubular lamp probably the best guess is horizontal, but who knows what Chinese thought. Lamps look like a cross where American style probe-start burners put into Euro style tubular bulbs.

@Medved: If that was as simple as reading the datasheet (as in case with true BLV) I would not ask. For E40 lamps BLV allows any position. Here the lamps are made by anonymous Chinese OEM and passed many hands in supply. And burner styles for 400W lamps look different to BLV (Ushio), not talking about BLVs are pulse-start only.

Most MH lamps here are pulse start, but whatever lamp it is, I always try and follow the manufacturer's instructions. If the burning position isn't marked on the lamp or carton, it's likely universal burn, but don't take that as read; look for a data sheet for the lamp and see what that says. Try emailing or otherwise contacting the manufacturer, assuming they're still in business.

This is the question may be to James or Max, someone who knows MH chemistry in depth. I have noticed that MH lamps which have pure indium iodide, or some indium-containing mixes often have black color of the frozen halide pool. Or sometimes the color is red. Or in some lamps the blue indium spectrum line is definitely present, but the salts pool is completely transparent. My very wild guess is that sometimes mercury reacts with indium iodide forming free indium and mercury iodide. One of mercury iodides is red, and remaining mercury may form a black amalgam with free indium. But this is just a guess. But why sometimes the salts pool is completely colorless, while indium iodide should be at least yellow? Indium dose too low? Or indium salt prefer to condense on the electrodes of the cold lamp? Another interesting thing is that frozen salts in indium lamp definitely change the color as the lamp cools down.

In the order of preference 

3000K CMH
3000K LED (With good CRI and mandatory glare control! Not the eye-piercing bare boards with LEDs!)

Other sorts of MH
Good old color corrected mercury. Soothing light in a park at night. Sorry, imprinted on this as a child)
Fluorescent and induction (rare today)

Sorry, I hate orange HPS light... Also deeply hate any streetlight with more than 4000K color temp.

Yep