Author Topic: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED  (Read 10762 times)
HPSM250R2
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #15 on: August 02, 2019, 05:52:51 PM » Author: HPSM250R2
It is depressing to see all the old lights being replaced with LEDs. It hasn't killed my interest in the old stuff though. If anything I'm more interested than ever in hoarding any old discharge stuff I can find lol. Especially mercury vapor and magnetic fluorescent. I'm stocking up on HID lamps and fluorescent lamps because the new lamps are junk and probably won't even be made on a large scale in 10 years.

I'm actually taking an interest in some LED lights, particularly the street lights. The indoor LED lights don't interest me much. I like filament LED bulbs though. I'd actually rather use them than incandescent lamps!

That's what I am doing too. Stocking up on lamps. I want to stock up on fixtures too but that needs to wait until I'm a lineman making a real salary unlike my pay at my current job. Plus if I have my own house storage won't be an issue I'll be free to hoard as much as I can lol.

I have been starting to like LED streetlights over the past few years. I guess since LED's started being installed here. I do like G.E. Evolve LED streetlights. The small ERS1 the most. LCEC is installing those here for 100 watt HPS replacements. I like the AEL Autobahn streetlights with the round glass optics. And the Philips Lumec (formerly Hadco) RX1 LED streetlights. I wish they were installing those here. The Cooper OVH and OVF LED would be nice to see since they are normal cobraheads.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #16 on: August 02, 2019, 06:33:29 PM » Author: wide-lite 1000
I don't particularly care for led but, weather we like it or not, at this day and time it's the way of the world, people didn't (and still don't) like seeing MV being replaced with HPS, just like they didn't like seeing incandescent streetlights replaced with MV, and gas lights replaced with incandescent and so on . I'm sure someday LED will get flushed down the drain by some other technology and there will be people who aren't happy ! (probably not me ).
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #17 on: August 02, 2019, 10:32:56 PM » Author: streetlight98
Yes. I too remember 10 years ago we were all bashing HPS for its sickly orange light. Now all of a sudden everyone loves it. Its just a sentimental thing. People hated MV lights back in the 60s and 70s for their blue blood drained light compared to nice warm incandescent lamps. When HPS came about everyone cried to have their MVs back.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #18 on: August 03, 2019, 11:22:39 PM » Author: Binarix128
Not yet, but every time I look up I only see shovels, spatulas and spoons.  :(
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #19 on: August 08, 2019, 11:44:15 PM » Author: BT25
Oh well, guess I was born 20 years too late.

I'm 30 years older than you and I feel sometimes that I was born to late!
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #20 on: August 09, 2019, 10:15:45 AM » Author: BT25
More so of the repetitious photos of the same installed common everyday streets lights that you see when you drive down the streets.
Yep, there's a lot of redundancy.  :(
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #21 on: August 09, 2019, 10:56:22 AM » Author: Lumex120
More so of the repetitious photos of the same installed common everyday streets lights that you see when you drive down the streets.
That's another one for me. I used to post lots of pics like that but now I try to only post unique or more interesting stuff.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #22 on: August 11, 2019, 06:01:10 AM » Author: Edmund Ironside
I understand that Americans find street lighting boring as most modern north american LED cobras look pretty much the same. Here in Europe there is a great variety in design of different LED fixtures so it is atually quite exiting seeing all the different installations in different towns. I think that Europe also has a greater wealth of designs of HID fixtures than the US where in my eyes most Cobras and north american fixtures looks very similar.

This whole idea that all LED's are crap and that the lighting interest is doomed seems strange to me as development goes forward. More efficient lighting techniques in all aspects, from light quality to fixtures size will always be the driving force for utilities and power companies. Your beloved 60's-70's-80's MV fixtures replaced even older fixtures and thats just the way things are. Development and technology moves forward. A lot of people on here seems to be bandwaggoning that all LED are crap and that all aspects of it is horrible, that we are doomed to only have crap LED lighting from now on. Sure, the lighting giants of yesteryear like Philips and Osram are sinking, but they are giving way to hundreds of smaller independent lighting companies making fixtures and developing new techniques. In this way we are regaining the uniqueness and wealth of products that was once available before the lighting giants bought and closed down all competition.

I too think HID i much more interesting and fun compared to LED's but i dont see them as the end of my hobby or something inherently bad - i see them as a exiting new field with great possibilites and atleast here in Europe - a lot of new fixtures to go hunting for (and a lot of older fixtures that can be yours)! :D

I think a lot of people on this forum just follow what other people say and dont really think about what they really feel. If one screams "leds suck!", a hundred other will follow. Dont give up on lighting, it's a great interest. Widen your view, accept reality and enjoy what we have, what we have had and what we are going to get.

Sorry for the wall of text, maybe im completely wrong, but this is just my 5 cents.

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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #23 on: August 11, 2019, 10:12:25 AM » Author: Cole D.
I agree in a way. I don't mind LED, and I can see the usefulness and advantages of it. I even use it myself. The new installations of LED don't bother me. And I guess maybe at some point long ago, people didn't like seeing the influx of MV or HPS replacing previous technology.

But what bothers me about LED is the one size fits all approach, and the fact that it is wiping out everything else. You didn't get that when fluorescent, or MV or HPS, or whatever else came out. People still bought and used the older technology, and we've been able to still buy most of the replacement lamps up until now.

But with LED, it seems to be, "You're going to use this and that's all there is to it. We're going to ban everything else, so all you can buy or use is LED. And we're even going to make all fixtures so they have the LEDs built in, and you can't even replace them."

That's the mentality that bothers me. They act like LED is going to be the end all of the lighting industry and nothing else will ever replace it. Which I don't believe is true. So I really don't get the why everyone wants to have ONLY LED and acts like it's the only technology there will ever be until the end of time.

Also, from a collecting standpoint, yes it's fun to collect lighting. But once all of the older technologies are gone, to me it does get boring. Because IMO, when there are still fluorescent, MV or HPS or MH lights still being used in public places, they have some relevance, some usefulness.

If they only exist in my collection or some dusty collection somewhere, and the replacement lamps are no longer being made, then to me they're just history that everyone else has forgotten, and they're irrelevant. To me that's sad.

And I do agree on the fixtures. Some might get offended, but when I was younger I used to find the cobra heads boring, because to me they looked so similar to each other, but I didn't realize how different they are or how old some of the ones here were. Back then I only found the ballast in arm fixtures very interesting. But now I like all types.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2019, 10:17:07 AM by Cole D. » Logged

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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #24 on: August 11, 2019, 11:53:49 AM » Author: BT25
I don't have a problem with LED overall, just that integrated LED fixtures are un-serviceable and have to be scrapped when they fail...which happens way to often. Where's the savings when you have to hire an electrician to replace it? I like LED's that replace incandescent and halogen due to the heat. (Just recently I sat near an incandescent lamp  ...I had forgotten how hot they were...had to move away.)

I agree, US LED cobra-heads all pretty much appear the same. Makes me nostalgic for the old days when you would see a cobra-head from a distance and you knew who made it...that started to change in the 80's...slowly at first then gained steam in the 90's...especially when GE made their M400R3, which looked way to much like an AEL 125.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #25 on: August 11, 2019, 12:41:07 PM » Author: Edmund Ironside
I don't have a problem with LED overall, just that integrated LED fixtures are un-serviceable and have to be scrapped when they fail...which happens way to often. Where's the savings when you have to hire an electrician to replace it? I like LED's that replace incandescent and halogen due to the heat. (Just recently I sat near an incandescent lamp  ...I had forgotten how hot they were...had to move away.)

I agree, US LED cobra-heads all pretty much appear the same. Makes me nostalgic for the old days when you would see a cobra-head from a distance and you knew who made it...that started to change in the 80's...slowly at first then gained steam in the 90's...especially when GE made their M400R3, which looked way to much like an AEL 125.

The problem of integrated LED's in non-servicable fixture is in my opinion quite a wide problem.
It's part manufacturers fault: manufacturers wants to make money and they make more money from selling you a new fixture than they make selling you a replacement lamp. There is not that much money in lighting any more, that is why Osram and Philips have separated their lighting divisins from their main companies. Osram is only a brand on Ledvance products and Philips only a brand on Signify products.

It is part consumers fault, they accept this kind of (...) and overall just want stuff as cheap as possible. I work in electronics retail and there are very few that understand that if you spend money on a good product you spend more upfront but it pays off in the end. A cheap product youll have to replace many times during the life of a good product, costing you more in the long run.

The last part is that integrated LED solutions are usually the most efficient solution. Retrofit LED's in most situations are quite crappy, you usually get bad optical control and bad thermals among other things. Integrated solution are more efficient in pretty much all aspects as creating a replacable led solution usually means creating a new standard (new standard pretty much always fail in the marketplace unless widely implemented) and complicating fixture design. In a integratedsystem you can have tight control over thermals, optics and size.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #26 on: August 11, 2019, 03:03:18 PM » Author: Roi_hartmann
The thing that saddens me most is that if you, for an example, bought a streetlight and a lamp back in 70's and stored it in even considerably good place for 100 years it probably still works fine if your grandchildren finds it and fires it up. Same cannot be said about fixtures that has electronic ballast as electronics ages even when not used, giving it limited shelf life. But this also happen to other electronic ballast and not just leds.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #27 on: August 11, 2019, 05:54:19 PM » Author: streetlight98
The thing that saddens me most is that if you, for an example, bought a streetlight and a lamp back in 70's and stored it in even considerably good place for 100 years it probably still works fine if your grandchildren finds it and fires it up. Same cannot be said about fixtures that has electronic ballast as electronics ages even when not used, giving it limited shelf life. But this also happen to other electronic ballast and not just leds.

A fixture having a magnetic ballast incorporating a capacitor in the circuit also has a limited shelf life. I get your point, but it affects lights from all eras.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #28 on: August 11, 2019, 09:13:50 PM » Author: Roi_hartmann
A fixture having a magnetic ballast incorporating a capacitor in the circuit also has a limited shelf life. I get your point, but it affects lights from all eras.
True, but in 230v, capacitor is optional for at least fluorescent and mv.
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Re: Losing interest in lighting due to the ubiquitous, omnipresent LED « Reply #29 on: August 12, 2019, 01:21:40 AM » Author: tolivac
If the cap is oil filled film-the shelf life for those can be indefinite.Now if its one of those dry electrolytic ones-then,yes,it has limited shelf life.
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