There was an interesting NY Times article yesterday about light bulbs. What does this have to do with photography? Well, if you photograph room interiors - a lot. Basically the incandescent bulb is not dead despite what you've maybe heard or read to the contrary. In fact, there is a lot of research and innovation going into the incandescent bulb to make it far more efficient. I'm very happy to read this because I hate compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs); I think they are awful and I will not use them. I don't like CFLs light quality, you can't dim them, their color is inconsistent (even from the same brand) and of course they contain mercury - that's not very "green."
I recently went to The Green Depot with some friends. There they have a booth with all different types of light bulbs installed. I think the idea is for you to turn on all the different options of bulbs to see for yourself what they look like so you can choose which one to use. Well, I walked out and exclaimed, without a doubt, I had found a winner - it was the standard incandescent bulb that I think was there merely as a comparison.
The problem has never been that the standard light bulb is a bad design, it's just never been updated to take advantage of modern materials and manufacturing to increase it's efficiency. I'm hoping this new generation of incandescent bulbs will soon compete with CFLs in both energy use and cost so that architects and designers will start using them ubiquitously.
On a completely different note, a blog reader sent me this link:
This is a VERY cool optical illusion where the exact same color appears to be two total different colors because of how our brains work. I love stuff like this.
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