Room lighting - LED?

[LRList001]

Does anyone have experience of switching to LED lighting (near daylight colour) for the room in which they run LR? Ie, the light source falling on the computer screen.

If so, good, bad, things to watch out for?

TIA

 

[PhilBurton]

I can only speak for LED lighting products in the USA. There are two considerations.

1. Color Temp, in degrees K. 4000 K will look too blue next to incandescent/halogen lighting. 5000 K is "daylight," and should be used only when specifically required. Best K for general indoor is 2700-3000K.

2. "Color Rendition Index." A perfect continuous spectrum of light, similar to sunlight or incandescent light, would be 100. For best results, get LED lighting that is 90 or above. Avoid 80 or below CRI, because a low CRI could produce the same sort of "off color" as fluorescent lighting. A good brand of LED bulbs and lamps is CREE. There are lots of bulbs and lights that will be less expensive than CREE, but for anything photo related, you should avoid them.

Phil

 

[LouieSherwin]

I have found that most LED bulbs available in the home improvement stores to be awful at color cast. Almost all of them are horribly blue/green. I may be more sensitive than most as I have been using Solux MR-16 low voltage bulbs for years but it is harder to get MR-16 fixtures.

I have, however found excellent LED bulbs from Sorra. They use a proprietary LED emitter that produces a very clean balanced light. In the past they only had MR-16 and PAR20 and PAR30 replacements but I just now checked their website and see that they now have the A19 screw in type bulb.

They are not cheep but if you value color rendition they are the best.

-louie

 

[PhilBurton]

I have found that most LED bulbs available in the home improvement stores to be awful at color cast. Almost all of them are horribly blue/green. I may be more sensitive than most as I have been using Solux MR-16 low voltage bulbs for years but it is harder to get MR-16 fixtures.

I have, however found excellent LED bulbs from Sorra. They use a proprietary LED emitter that produces a very clean balanced light. In the past they only had MR-16 and PAR20 and PAR30 replacements but I just now checked their website and see that they now have the A19 screw in type bulb.

They are not cheep but if you value color rendition they are the best.

-louie

Good post, The company Louie mentioned is Soraa, and yes, they are not exactly inexpensive.

It is entirely possible that the bulb sizes MR-16, PAR20, and PAR30 are US or US/Canadian only. For forum members outside the US, these websites may be of use as a reference:
Light Bulb Base Types | Topbulb
Lightopedia.com - Bulb shapes sizes

Phil Burton

 

[LRList001]

I have found that most LED bulbs available in the home improvement stores to be awful at color cast. Almost all of them are horribly blue/green. I may be more sensitive than most as I have been using Solux MR-16 low voltage bulbs for years but it is harder to get MR-16 fixtures.

I have, however found excellent LED bulbs from Sorra. They use a proprietary LED emitter that produces a very clean balanced light. In the past they only had MR-16 and PAR20 and PAR30 replacements but I just now checked their website and see that they now have the A19 screw in type bulb.

They are not cheep but if you value color rendition they are the best.

-louie

Thanks for the info

 

[LRList001]

Well, I have gotten some with a claimed colour rendition similar to the Sorra lamps. The first snag so far is they make a slight hum. Getting used to the new colour temperature.

 

[Ian Oliver]

CRI is actually a quite poor measure of light quality. Manufactures can tweak a lamp to hit a CRI of 94 or 96 and yet still have a very uneven and spiky spectrum. TM-30 is a much better measure since it has a much better and broader Fidelity index but also looks at Gamut and Color Vector. Unfortunately very few are publishing TM-30 measurements yet (because they show how poor most lamps really are).

If you want LED in your edit suite then I'd recommend getting a good quality color balanced constant source panel used for video production as these tend to be much higher quality color rendering.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

So as a certifiable vampire, that loves the dark....

Why do I need a light source in my room while post-processing at all? I usually have the room dark, or at most one small bulb (LED) reflecting off the ceiling that is barely bright enough to read by.

Does the eye need a light source away from the monitor for setting some kind of internal baseline or something?

Recognizing that how the eye interprets is way below the conscious level, it FEELS like being in a dark room works just fine. But is it somehow throwing me off?

On a related note, should the target calibration of monitors vary depending on the color temperature of any background light you are using? E.g. if I am using 6500 as my target, should I also be buying 6500 bulbs?

 

[Ian Oliver]

Generally for best results, even for a vampire, you want to edit, or at least color grade, in a room w/ neutral grey walls and ceiling with some bit of light in the room. Total darkness can often produce poor results as can any color in the room. Totally dark rooms can also increase eye strain. HOWEVER, I've worked in a number of video editing suites where only the wall you face is grey and others are wood or fabric or something nicer and that seems to work. Many production houses will have general editing suites like that and perhaps one that is an awful and boring neutral grey on every conceivable surface for color grading.

Traditionally the film industry targeted 5600°k and so this is what lighting in editing suites was and I still prefer that to 6500°. My favorite editing suite had an indirect light above the ceiling that produced a great dimmable indirect glow on the walls with each wall individually controllable.

Now for a disclaimer, I'm quite awful at color grading be it video of photo.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Generally for best results, even for a vampire, you want to edit, or at least color grade, in a room w/ neutral grey walls and ceiling with some bit of light in the room. Total darkness can often produce poor results as can any color in the room. Totally dark rooms can also increase eye strain. HOWEVER, I've worked in a number of video editing suites where only the wall you face is grey and others are wood or fabric or something nicer and that seems to work. Many production houses will have general editing suites like that and perhaps one that is an awful and boring neutral grey on every conceivable surface for color grading.

Traditionally the film industry targeted 5600°k and so this is what lighting in editing suites was and I still prefer that to 6500°. My favorite editing suite had an indirect light above the ceiling that produced a great dimmable indirect glow on the walls with each wall individually controllable.

Now for a disclaimer, I'm quite awful at color grading be it video of photo.

I don't know that 6500 is correct, but I am told that it is probably the best guess at most (non-photographer) monitors, and so if you are doing images that will primarily be displayed on the web, it seemed a best bet.

Is it?

But to your recommendations (disclaimer aside), there's nothing neutral in my office where I post process, everything is various earth tones, copper, wood, etc. Does that mean it's best to keep the light off.