A few days ago I received a booklet from RS, to whom I still refer as Radiospares.
It's entitled "The Lamp Guide" and it uses lots of words like "important" and "efficiently" and is very strange.
I say it's strange because among the attributes to help lamp selection it makes no mention whatsoever about the most important parameter: brightness.
I'm certainly not an expert when it comes to lamps, but I do know when it's too dark to see.
Three weeks ago when visiting Ikea I decided to buy a new light fitting for our hallway to illuminate the contents of a new bookcase (the purchase of which was the Ikea visit).
Remembering a trip there several years ago I remarked that the lighting department was easy to find. No need to consult the floor plan.. just head for the huge source of illumination. Wrong. We entered soft furnishings then kitchenware then gave up and consulted the floorplan.
We ended up in a poorly lit, gloomy area full of bright point sources of light.
We selected a set of swish looking super-efficient chrome plated halogen lamps complete with transformers which I duly fitted.
Bad choice. I needed a torch to find the book I was looking for in the new bookcase. Super-efficient should have read "low power".
How does one equate light output from a 5 foot fluorescent tube and an LED lamp for example?
The former produces lots of useful light and the latter a very bright point source of light.
Illumination-wise factors like chalk and cheese.
Turning to another choice.. efficiency. How does one work out efficiency?
I can understand a comparison of 1 watt and 85 watt but how many 6 watt LED lamps with a 35 degree beam angle equals one 65 watt fluorescent tube?
