Lighting for Layouts?

[Selector]

I favour the GU 10 50 watt halogen mini-floods that you can get at all do-it-yourself stores. Canadian tire has a number of suitable fixtures, including chromed ones with articulating arms carrying two or more heads per arm. These can be arranged to suit your lighting needs. They run hot, but they do a wonderful job of flooding light onto your scene. I wouldn't be without my twin 8' tracks, running parallel about four feet apart, each with five or six fixtures on them.

-Crandell

[eightyeightfan1]

I like the overall effect of your lighting Crandall. Gives the illusion of a "mostly cloudy" day.

[tv_man]

That cloudy day look is brilliant. Could even imagine using slowly moving spots to simulate moving clouds..

[RobertInOntario]

I prefer natural light from windows if possible..If not then I what I use is -well-ah hem-a floor lamp with shade since I don't like overhead lights.This works quite well for me..I use 100 watt bulbs.

I'm open to using something like this. However, I'm pleased with the bright white-ish light that my new desk lamp gives. It's a typical, run-of-the-mill large lamp that would normally be used over a desk or drafting board, etc. The light appears white because of the new 60-watt environmentally-friendly bulb. It appears quite bright and natural.

I think good lighting is important because it's quite obvious that -- if you have poor lighting -- you can easily become tired (eye fatigue). Has anyone else noticed the difference that good lighting makes?

Rob

[Selector]

Yes, Robert. My first layout, the hurried three-sheets of 1/2" ply slab I threw together, had two flourescent 4" tubes assemblies with two tubes in each. Overhead, they provided very poor illumination for the rods and valve gear of my steamers. I resorted to tall lamps. They got in my way. As you can see by my image, I purposefully had the electricians install the twin 8' tracks so that all the pots would be aimed near 45 deg downard from over my shoulders when I was operating the layout from the obvious central pit. That change, plus the warmer light from the floods, has made a huge difference for my now 57 year old eyes.

Also, for those who are not familiar with the tracked lighting, those pots can be twisted and unlocked, and then slid along the track to where their use would be most advantageous. Really useful in photography.

Thanks for your kind comments about the lighting in my images. I do actually have to work at it, and it is often just luck. I have learned to stop down the camera and to let a friend use his software to accent what needs it...but he has told me several times he can't subdue overexposed spots, by which my light ground goop is a nasty struggle. It also depends on the total light incident on the exposure detector and on the recording CCD at the back of the camera. When I get close in good light, the tone changes, and the scene takes on a brighter sunlit look. Many of my shots are not so, as you have observed. The overcast effect is probably an artifact of my tampering with the too-dark image in FastStone...I reduce contrast and brighten it a bit for stuff to stand out more naturally, but that imparts a hazy or overcast hue to the whole. At least, that is what I have concluded.

-Crandell

[Russ Bellinis]

I prefer natural light from windows if possible..If not then I what I use is -well-ah hem-a floor lamp with shade since I don't like overhead lights.This works quite well for me..I use 100 watt bulbs.

I'm open to using something like this. However, I'm pleased with the bright white-ish light that my new desk lamp gives. It's a typical, run-of-the-mill large lamp that would normally be used over a desk or drafting board, etc. The light appears white because of the new 60-watt environmentally-friendly bulb. It appears quite bright and natural.

I think good lighting is important because it's quite obvious that -- if you have poor lighting -- you can easily become tired (eye fatigue). Has anyone else noticed the difference that good lighting makes?

Rob

The most valuable clinic I attended at the NMRA National Convention in Anaheim last year was titled "Model Railroad Lighting for Senior Eyes" or something similar. The speaker was an optometrist and professor in the optometry dept. at a university in Indiana. I won't try to repeat all of the advice he gave because I would forget some of it. He did say that the human eye is designed for seeing in sunlight conditions. Lighting that differs significantly from sunlight will cause eye fatigue. He also pointed out that when we focus on some thing like a computer screen or book, the eyes will move slightly together and dilate or open the pupils to let in more light. Since our eyes are designed to focus when looking down or straight ahead as opposed to looking up, only 2 muscles are used to move the eyes together to focus when we look up, but when looking straight ahead or down, 4 muscles are used=less fatigue looking down than looking up. The problems get worse with age, so a 19 year old it tech can look up at a computer screen all day without problems, but the 40 or 50 year old that he set the computer up for will have problems with eye fatigue if he/she spends a lot of time looking up at a computer screen. The other thing he mentioned was that the eye produces 2 kinds of tears. One type is produced with every normal eye blink, and it lubricates the eye. The other type is a saline solution that washes out the eye if we get something in it. We normally blink about 12 times per minute, EXCEPT when we concentrate on something. Then the other thing the eye does when concentrating is it slows the blink rate. The problem is that the slower blink rate causes the eye to dry out because it doesn't get enough lubrication. Then the eye starts to fell that burning sensation, and starts producing the "washing tears" rather than the lubricating tears that are needed. If the burning sensation continues, the eye tells the brain to just go to sleep. Ever get that burning sensation when driving or reading and then feel an overwhelming need to go to sleep? His suggestion was to take a short break from focusing like when reading, working on a computer, building models whenever the eyes start to burn. Get eye drops like "Theratears" at your local drug store, and use them at least once or twice an hour to replenish the missing lubricant when focusing for long periods of time. Get the type in packets, because a big bottle may accumulate bacteria after time, but the small ampules can be used for 24 hours or longer if kept refrigerated between applications. He also suggested that it is a good idea to take some along on driving trips, and stop and use them every hour or so for the same reason.

[Selector]

One other very important feature of the aging eye is the extent to which the pupil can dilate (widen to let in a wider cross-section of light). As we age, our ability to dilate the pupil is reduced so extensively that we see poorly in low light conditions. Hands up all of you reading over the age of 47 who need more light to read and who probably also need bifocals....yup, a lot of hands.

There is more. In addition to letting in a wider cross-section of light as it expands, the wider aperture that results also allows us to discern details better...tiny ones like two periods on the printed page placed next to one another and held about 4 feet away from the eye. This is what makes optics, such as binoculars and telescopes, so effective. In addition to letting more light into the eye (by focusing all light that gets into those big fron lenses or reflected off the mirrors), the wider aperture helps to split two similar objects and make them distinctly separate. This is important in the study of two stars close to each other, but appearing as one to the naked eye. Similarly for the aged eye, when light is generally not great, and we can't adapt by expanding the iris as we could at age 20, we don't see the details that the 20 year-old can see standing beside us.

This information should help to explain why many of us move up a scale or two by the time we are 60.

-Crandell

[RobertInOntario]

Thanks, Russ and Crandell.

This is helpful and the sort of info I was interested in. I'm 49 but started to need reading glasses about 2 years ago, so this is another factor for me to consider. I'm sure I could have got by with poorer lighting 20 years ago, but now, since I'm close to 50 and need reading glasses, good lighting is much more important.

It's probably a good thing I'm sticking with HO. I've been tempted to switch to N for space reasons, but then it gets very hard to work in N scale with these "aging eyes"!

Thanks, Rob