Monday, May 11, 2015

Mucking around with lighting

April and May are very busy months on the farm with us planting our crops. It means long days sitting on tractors which isn't very conducive to getting any modelling done. It does mean that I have plenty of time to ponder about issues on the layout that are still annoying me.

Lighting is one issue that I have thought about for some time. I currently use fluorescent lights with daylight tubes which has both advantages and disadvantages. The light is bright and uniform with no shadows. They are also not that cheap to buy, they are heavy and when they are all on they do heat the room up. I still have about half the layout that still needs lights so I have been exploring options. I have tried the LED strip lighting but found the colours wrong and not enough light.

I recently found some LED downlights with a daylight colour (4000K) and I thought I would try a couple and see how they look. As you can see in the following photos the colour and level of light is good. What is different from the fluorescents is the shadows. Part of me thinks it looks more natural but because of having multiple light sources with more than one LED I am getting multiple shadows. They are reasonably subtle so I am not sure what to think. If any of you in reader land out there have thoughts or experience on using downlights,  I would like to hear from you.

Cheers Murray