Age related rant.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Rather than hijack the original thread I started this one.
I use lots of CFL bulbs. I don't really like them but they do make sense - somewhat. My computer work area (I work from home) is all track lighting. Something about LED lights does not seem right to me.

While a LED light (I have flashlights and a desk lamp that are LED) appears brighter if looked at directly, the objects being illuminated do not seem to be as well lit as they would with incadescent. This is possibly a problem with my vision. I a vision problem that requires BRIGHT light for things like seeing and reading - wet AMD. I used to have flashlights all over the house for seeing into dim places.

As a person gets older vision starts to degrade. Contrast seems to degrade, at least in my case, quite a bit. Many times I cannot see something in plain sight because the colors of the object and the background are close.

Much of what we see is produced by young people who, for the most part, have very good vision. Look at web pages and you will see a massive amount that are difficult to read because of contrast betwee text and background. I have seen on site that used Bright white text on a dull white background. You also see a lot of light blue on cyan - another difficult combination. Backgrouns are sometimes so busy the text cannot be read.

There are some publications that also make reading difficult by printing on colored backgrouns with a similar colored text.

Vision is not the only problem area. Radio and TV have a endency to use lots of background music while someone is speaking. Sometimes it is impossible to understand what is being said. The local radio station used to have a 19 year old doing sports reports for the local high school teams. He always had heavy metal background music and the volume of the music was at least as high as the volume of his voice (thakfullty they stopped the background music).

[Joe Pelonio]

Very true observations. As a signmaker for many years I have often explained to people that the best sign for reading at a distance is
dark color on light background, especially black on white. Burgundy on teal is not effective.

With lighting, I agree that CFL's and LEDs do not provide the same quality of light, in fact Halogen is the best, but cost has become a big factor for most of us. I hate having to wait for the kitchen recessed fixture CFLs to warm up in the morning, trying to make my coffee with a faint pink glow, but with 8 of them the old incandescent floods were costing us a fortune to run.

Young people do seem to have a need to have music going all the time, but then I was that way too years ago and probably just out grew it.

Having gone to a lot of concerts in my teens and 20s (think Led Zepellin,
Jehtro Tull and Framton) I'm surprised I can still hear at my age, but from what I hear it's even worse on the ears to be listening all the time with the earbuds.

[Lee Schierer]

We recently replaced our dinging room light fixture with a new one that would take CFL's. We purchased 5 bright white bulbs and they come on dim and get brighter as they warm up. It is rather pleasant in the morning when you aren't fully awake instead of the super bright eye hurting brightness. My only regret is we didn't get the daylight color.

[Dan Hintz]

The difference between a CFL and an LED is the LED can be tuned for a specific temperature (i.e., color). Some units can be tuned by the user.

LEDs appear bright when you look at them because it's a point source, whereas CFLs and incandescents shed their light over a large glass envelope.

[Keith Outten]

There is a reason that you don't use flourescent lamps over grinding wheels and other machines that turn at 3400 rpm. The light pulses very close to the rpm of the wheel and it apprears to be stopped.

I wonder what the Government has in mind for these applications or maybe this would be an exception that Roger made reference to.
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[Rick Markham]

Glen, Dan is right, LED's are color specific, if you want true "daylight" look for bulbs rated in the 5600K to 6500K range that might help some of the color rendering issues for you. Those are the closest to true daylight spectrum as that is the light spectrum of true sunlight. 5600K is a little more yellowish than 6500K which has a little more blue (appears to be a whiter light)

LED's not that long ago were pretty pitiful, it would probably be worthwhile to try some of the newer ones, they are making great improvements on the things all the time. There are some pretty great (I have one and love it) LED desk lamps with 48 or so LED's (in those spectrums) that really provide great light for reading, nice and intense but not uncomfortable for reading. I bet one of those would help you a whole lot for reading and looking at a keyboard.

As far as the webpages, I tend to agree with you. I am young, and have excellent eyesight, I have a heck of a time reading pages that are set up like you describe. Personally I find it distracting and annoying, and sometimes don't even "bother" trying. I figure if someone isn't bright enough to realize that people can't read what they are writing (even with good eyesight) then they probably don't have much to offer me as far as intellectual stimulation.

There are a couple options you could try for those pages you want to read. You can increase the text size on your PC, by holding CTRL and using the mouse wheel to increase the magnification (tell your family as it changes it across the whole computer so they don't think that they did something) This really helps my father who is a senior and has trouble.

The really tough pages to read (aka. with bad contrast) you can highlight the whole page, then right click 'copy' and then paste all of it in Microsoft word or another writing program, it should completely remove the background and allow you to read just the text. It might be a total PITA, but it works. Hopefully someone will have an easier solution for you with that one!

Good luck Glen! I feel your pain. I hope maybe I helped a little in someway!;)

[Curt Harms]

............................
There are a couple options you could try for those pages you want to read. You can increase the text size on your PC, by holding CTRL and using the mouse wheel to increase the magnification (tell your family as it changes it across the whole computer so they don't think that they did something) This really helps my father who is a senior and has trouble.

The really tough pages to read (aka. with bad contrast) you can highlight the whole page, then right click 'copy' and then paste all of it in Microsoft word or another writing program, it should completely remove the background and allow you to read just the text. It might be a total PITA, but it works. Hopefully someone will have an easier solution for you with that one!

Good luck Glen! I feel your pain. I hope maybe I helped a little in someway!;)

I use the highlight trick quite a bit. I don't usually copy it, just highlight it to get better contrast. And you're right, night vision degrades with age in everyone.

[John Coloccia]

While a LED light (I have flashlights and a desk lamp that are LED) appears brighter if looked at directly, the objects being illuminated do not seem to be as well lit as they would with incadescent. This is possibly a problem with my vision. I a vision problem that requires BRIGHT light for things like seeing and reading - wet AMD. I used to have flashlights all over the house for seeing into dim places.


It's because LEDs lights are typically designed very poorly. They should be designed like the headlight in your car (essentially the light radiates onto a reflector to get the proper profile), but instead they're typically just pointed straight ahead. I did a lot of research into this when I was building my airplane, and I was using LED lights on them.

This, for example, is a well designed system with aimed LEDs and reflectors. I've seen some very well designed lights that work beautifully but I've no idea where to buy them for use as regular bulbs and lamps. I wish I did.
(from my own website, by the way)
http://www.ballofshame.com/flying/Bearhawk/buildLog/20061221.php

[Gene Howe]

Glen, Dan is right, LED's are color specific, if you want true "daylight" look for bulbs rated in the 5600K to 6500K range that might help some of the color rendering issues for you. Those are the closest to true daylight spectrum as that is the light spectrum of true sunlight. 5600K is a little more yellowish than 6500K which has a little more blue (appears to be a whiter light)


Thanks for this info, Rick. Will be replacing a few in the near future and this will be very helpful.