RE: You light up my life . . .

[Ashful]

ashful read something a while back about the blue LEDs being bad for the eyes. permanent damage. do you know anything about this?

I used to work in the opto business, specifically long-haul fiber-optic transmitters, so we were always working with high power lasers. The physiological effects of shooting a laser into your eye was not my area of expertise, but I remember from those days was that any single-wavelength light can cause very serious and permanent eye damage. Essentially, your iris is designed to close to control the amount of light hitting the retina, and if it fails to do so, permanent damage can occur in the retina. I think what happens in the case of lasers and LEDs is that there are wavelengths of light to which your iris does not react, allowing all of that light to just saturate the retina. Again, not my area of expertise, but that was my layman’s understanding of it.

What’s surprising to me about your blue LED comment is that I thought the issue was related to the fact that our lasers were infrared, and so they were outside the visible spectrum. I thought this was the reason why the iris would not properly close to protect the retina, essentially because we could not “see” the light they were making. But, this is a diverse forum, there are probably some ophthalmologists floating around here somewhere, that could set us straight.

 

[firefighterjake]

jake if you put in the reflector type of flood it will just spot the light if you put in a regular shape bulb it will spread out as far as the fixture will let it. these day light color lights are trying to imitate the sky without the sun and in general it just doesn't cut it brightness wise with what color works best with the eyes.

ashful read something a while back about the blue LEDs being bad for the eyes. permanent damage. do you know anything about this?

I was thinking something like this . . . but now am wondering if I should try something else.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-NIGHTHAWK-250-Watt-EQ-Warm-White-Dimmable-Flood-Light-Bulb/1000445391

 

[fbelec]

that's real bright. that goes good for me the older i get the more light i want. with a 40 degree spread that would work well i think i would put a dimmer on it.

 

[fbelec]

and it's GE

 

[peakbagger]

and it's GE

Sadly GE is no longer a sign of quality. I believe GE has sold the lighting division to the highest bidder (along with the appliance division previously).

 

[Corey]

If you are looking at something dimmable, you might consider a Sylvania 'sunset effect' bulb or Philips 'warm glow'. Believe the sylvania will sweep ~2500K to 3000K+ and the philips is a bit narrower. But the ultimate effect is that you can have a warm 'ambiance' glow when you want it or brighten up to very bright white 'incandescent' glow on the philips, or a nearly 'stark' white light with the sylvania bulb for work, security, etc.

 

[begreen]

Sadly GE is no longer a sign of quality. I believe GE has sold the lighting division to the highest bidder (along with the appliance division previously).

True. I have had more than one GE bulb fail within days in the past couple years. I have stopped buying their bulbs.

 

[fbelec]

sadly i didn't know this about GE. i just started buying their LEDs. no problem so far i always bought their soft white incandescent. they always lasted long and remained bright white to the end

 

[peakbagger]

In the early history of electricity there were two companies GE and Westinghouse. Westinghouse really won the AC/DC battle and gre huge into breaking up into many divisions and one of the many divisions turned into CBS. Along the way one of the many divisions decided to market the name with little concern over the quality or claims made for consumer products. The result is there has some been some real crap sold under the Westinghouse brand name. I believe GE is in the process of doing the same.

One interesting result with Westinghouse is Nikola Tesla who was behind much of Westinghouse's early AC technology at one point sold all his rights to his AC power inventions and was relegated to crack pot status by mainstream media. He remained so until the popular press and technology folks collectively raised him back up on a pedestal and thus we have Elon Musk adopting Tesla's name for his company.