Lighting fine art can present a museum or gallery curator with a major problem: how can you brightly light a painting or sculpture, render the colors accurately, and not damage the art with warm light? Curators in Mexico City faced this problem when they needed to select a light source for one of the greatest murals of all time by one of the all time great muralists, “Dreaming of a Sunday in Alameda Park,” by Diego Rivera. The curators ultimately decided on PAR38 LED lamps to illuminate the 16m long mural. LED lamps are ideal for lighting art work for multiple reasons. The first and most important is that they give off no heat, which could damage an aged canvas or delicate statue. Secondly, LEDs are naturally directional which is ideal if you are lighting an individual object that requires a large amount of light being concentrated upon it. Lastly, LEDs are long lasting and extremely efficient: with a life hour rating typically between 50,000hrs and 100,000hrs, any museum or gallery will appreciate the low maintenance and energy savings of LED bulbs. LED lamps with very good CRI are now available, making it a realistic option for illuminating an object with vibrant color. The curators most likely chose and LED flood because the mural was large (16m X 5m). But, for smaller pieces of art there are other good options, and not solely LED options.
MR16s, in addition to LED lamps, are often ideal for illuminating smaller pieces of art. Most MR16s feature “cool beams” which simply means that the heat generated by the lamp’s halogen light source is funneled out of the bulb, thus cooling the reflector and cooling the light produced. MR16s feature directional light with sharp edges which make it a great choice for general display and even accent lighting. LED MR16s, the best of both worlds, also exist. Silver and Ushio offer 4w to 5w MR16s with standard GU5.3 bases to guarantee that if you plan to retrofit your standard MR16s with LED MR16s, you would likely to be able to do so with no problem.
LEDs are revolutionizing the way art is illuminated. One should expect to see more and more of the world’s greatest pieces of are under the light of LEDs. Whether you are illuminating a hundred year old portrait or simply a photograph of your dog, you want a bulb that will be true to what is in the frame. LEDs are the bulb for the job. BulbAmerica has many LED options to choose from, check out all of our options right now!
To a person who has never seen or worked with a high intensity discharge (HID) gas lamp before, he or she might not at first realize that what they were looking at is even a light bulb. Most people when they think of a light bulb picture the classic A-shaped incandescent and picture the filament sitting within the glass envelope above the base. Low pressure and high pressure sodium light bulbs and xenon short arc bulbs, in particular, can understandably confuse customers. With their strange shapes, lack of conventional filament, and the uncharacteristic features within the bulb’s atmosphere, it is no surprise why some people are scratching their heads over these light sources. This article will attempt to clarify some of these concerns and conundrums and familiarize readers with HID gas discharge lamps.
It may first be helpful to briefly review how a HID gas lamp works. Let’s take a xenon short arc lamp as an example. In a xenon short arc lamp, a ballast will supply the initial electrical current or pulse and ionize the lamp and vaporize the solid material inside, provided there is any. Electrical current will travel through a conductor and eventually form an electrical field inside the bulb’s quartz envelope via the cathode. A xenon short arc lamp, and all HIDs for that matter, does not reach full brightness instantaneously because the gas must become sufficiently excited by the electrical current and release sufficient electrons to produce large amounts of light. The light forms in a small arc between the cathode and the anode at the center of the quartz envelope, and hence ‘short arc’. Here we have the answer to the question, ‘where is the filament?’ The answer is there is none in any conventional sense because a HID bulb does not produce light in the same way an incandescent bulb does.
Sometimes customers are also concerned by the state in which their HID lamp arrives in. Before we tackle this set of issues, you should remember two things about gas discharge lamps. First, gas discharge lamps are filled with a type of gas depending on what type of lamp it is (xenon, argon, neon, or krypton) and often additional materials such as sodium (i.e. low/high pressure sodium bulbs), mercury, or metal halides. Second, as stated before, gas discharge bulbs take a few minutes to reach full luminosity. Now, with these two considerations in mind we will move on to customer concerns. One common concern among customers is that when a customer receives his or her gas discharge lamp, particularly high pressure or low pressure sodium lamps, there is a loose solid metal substance rolling around in the glass envelope. This is not a defect of the lamp, and in fact it is how they should come. Before the sodium in a sodium vapor lamp is vaporized, it is in a solid metallic state, this is what you are seeing. Another common concern, particularly pertaining to xenon short arc bulbs, is that upon their arrival the quartz envelope is blackened, leading customers to understandably think that the bulb arrived burned out! This is not the case, what has happened is that when the bulb was tested it was not left in operation long enough to reach full brightness, the blackening results from this. There is also a chance that the blackening resulted from a faulty ballast or related issue, however the blackening does not indicate the bulb has burned out like it does for an incandescent bulb. A xenon short arc bulb that has reached the end of its life will have its envelope bulged out in one direction and will actually be all white inside.
As the adage goes, ‘know your enemy,’ and although light bulbs should never be your enemy, sometimes it can feel like they are. So before you receive your HID lamp, make sure you read up on it and know what to expect when you take it out of the box. As always, comment on the blog or call BulbAmerica at 1888-505-2111 for any questions concerning your light bulb or lighting needs.
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The Coloray Wash and Coloray driver together form an excellent LED wall-wash system for nearly all environments. The Coloray LED system is easy to set up and nearly easier to use, get yours today and add the color to your space and marvel at the difference it makes. Check it out today!
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