I'm currently wiring my basement and i'm trying to determine what's the best way to go for overhead lighting, track,flourescent,other. i'd like to hear some feedback on what type of lighting you use and results you get from it. quality,amount of light,etc.
thanks alot,
All I have are hot GA10 mini-halogens on an 8' track X 2. Five per track. Did I say they heated up the area?
But, boy do they light up the scenery. Really good for photography, too.
I think if you were to get the right kind of flourescents and then add one or two plug-in halogens for photography you will be quite happy.
I had designed my benchwork before I put in new overhead lighting, so right now I have tube flourescents over the aisleways - five fixtures in a sloppy E formation.
When my construction reaches that point, I will put in shadowbox lighting similar to that used by Joe Fugate. The ceiling lights will then be relegated to convenience and construction use, and left off during operations.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
The best I can hope for is small lighting where they are most needed. The house already eats alot of electricity on that small box.
I have seen track lighting used to great success. I will probably go along. Particularly if the spouse is wanting that system to improve our living area with that style of lighting.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Jerry SP FOREVER http://photobucket.com/albums/f317/GAPPLEG/
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Incandescents and hallogens use a lot of electricity, most of which is turned into heat, not light. On the other hand flourescents cannot be dimmed.
If you fill the room with incandescents it is going to get hot in there. I hope the space is air conditioned.
My situation is unusual. My layout room used to be a photogaphy studio camera room. It is equipped with daylight flourescent continuous lights in soft boxes on an overhead track system with pantagraphs. They can be moved anywhere in the room at any height above the floor. Each soft box has either 2 or 3 brightness levels while still maintaining consistant color.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
I installed Track lighting on a dimmer
TerryinTexas
See my Web Site Here
http://conewriversubdivision.yolasite.com/
My pike lighting has been a REAL trial & error scenario
The Trainroom in all, is about 17' x 24'. The layout takes up a little over 16' x 16' with entrance doors and a "Backshop" taking up the rest.
Wanting to be as cost / energy effective as I can, I have gone with simple florescent lighting. The lighting for the shop area and isles have four twin tube florescent fixtures, one in each isle and two in the shop, which are plenty sufficient.
I am working from the top down, so my lighting was the first to go up. The original idea of spotlighting scenes with track-lighting was given up when my track plan changed (more than a few times) and I now have only florescent for the most part....
I have 4 ft. single tube fixtures mounted forward (above the front edge of the layout shelf) behind a valance. These fixtures pretty much butt against one another all around the room and the length of both side of the peninsula, making for fifteen fixtures in all.
In addition I also have what I call my "mood lighting"; two strings of Christmas lights (one blue, one white) that are on dimmers to simulate morning, dusk, and night. Over all I like how it has turned out.
As for photography, the florescent isn't the best, but they do take less energy and generate a lot less heat, a trade off that I personally can live with.
I use fluorescent lights. My layout room is about 560 sq. ft., but a very odd shape. I have 16 4' double tube fixtures over the layout in a drop ceiling. About a third of the layout is designed to be double-decked, and an additional 8 to 10 similar fixtures will be attached to the underside of the second level to allow full lighting for the then-lower level. I use cool white tubes because they offer the most lumens of any fluorescents, even though the colour is not the nicest.
colvinbackshop As for photography, the florescent isn't the best, but they do take less energy and generate a lot less heat, a trade off that I personally can live with.
Most digital cameras have an optional setting for use with fluorescent lighting, and do a good job of correcting the colour balance. The photos below were taken under room lighting only.
Wayne
selector wrote:All I have are hot GA10 mini-halogens on an 8' track X 2. Five per track. Did I say they heated up the area?But, boy do they light up the scenery. Really good for photography, too.I think if you were to get the right kind of flourescents and then add one or two plug-in halogens for photography you will be quite happy.
Good for photography? Don't they tend to make hot spots and generate multiple shadows? Or did you get around those issues?
I shot the following picture on the layout of a friend and he also uses the mini-haologen lites but there are significant issues with the uniformity of lighting.
http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/otherlayouts/barta/barta_02.htm
As for mixing lighting types, one must be very careful regarding color temperatures. Halogens are perhaps around 3000K or so. Using 5000K fluorescents in the ceiling would drive the white balance select in a digital camera nuts. Using 3500K (or so) fluorescents would create a bit 'bluer' light that might resemble illumination from the "sky bowl".
Try to mock up and see what it will look like (and take pictures too if photography is of interest) before investing in a boatload of (potentially expensive) lighting fixtures.
I settled on a plethora of dual wrap T8 fluorescent fixtures for my train room (dungeon) with 4100K CRI85 bulbs. They're not perfect but those bulbs were half the cost of the super daylight tubes and at 3000 lumens each there's enough light in the train room to shoot candid shots of op sessions without a flash.
http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/bcsj3_ops/ops_071110/index.html
Regards,
Charlie Comstock
Charlie, I know your work, so I won't be going toe-to-toe with you.
But...I feel that the track lighting allows the placement of the various fixtures in an infinite series of linear positions, so the light spotting and multiple shadows can be reduced almost to insignificance. As for the bright spots, nature does that too. The sun pokes through holes in the clouds and will render parts of the landscape seemingly in shadow while others are brightly lit....'cuz that's exactly what is happening.
Here are a couple of images that should help you to judge for yourself if multiple shadows and light spots of significant intensity are problematic. The first was purposefully done in such a way that the foreground is highlighted by the closest GA10, while all the others in the layout room are aimed as they usually are, somewhat convergent and parallel, but certainly overlapping.
Here is a different shot with the five lights spaced as I normally have them and all in their normal aimed positions...the two outer aimed outward to cover the corners. No other lighting is present, and the image is merely cropped. It isn't the best sort to judge by, but I think the visible shadows are sufficiently clean-limbed to pass for realistic.
So that you can get a sense of what is where, here is a shot taken one night from outside the basement, through the window. You can see the one track high in the image, while the second is to the right, perhaps by 4', obscured by the window frame. Clearly, there are some duplicated shadows, but I can control that to a significant extent with convergence and with juxtapositioning of two or more light fixtures...they're easy to relocate....takes seconds.
-Crandell
Funny you should ask... Next week, I'll be gutting the to-be-train-room to begin the conversion to full-fledged train room. Step One: Lighting. I've got a "standard" bedroom -- roughly 10x10 plus a closet recess. The room currently has no permanent fixtures (just one switch that controls an outlet.)
I plan to install three lengths of track lights in a U formation to cover the three walls that don't have the door and closet, and a fourth track inside the closet. These will run on two separate switches. Initially, I'll use CFL's. Eventually, those will be replaced by incandescents, and the two switches replaced with dimmers. Long term, I'll go with dimmable CFL's (once the price comes down to less than an arm and a leg.) Maybe by then, I'll just be able to go straight to LED's. (Yes, they're available, and they're GREAT, but they're also $$$$$$$.)
Peter
Nice views, Crandell, particularily the second one. Your post reminded me that I had neglected to mention that one of the main drawbacks of fluorescent lighting is that the light is very "flat", with generally no distinct shadows. This "flat" light also tends to hide a lot of detail, although a digital camera seems to be able to pick it up anyway. The drawback to that is that you sometimes get pictures like this: (you'll need to click on the photo to see this best) [:I]
The cobweb on the loco wasn't visible when I was taking the photo, and it was even difficult to see when I went back to clean it up after seeing the photo. Most of the pictures that I posted here earlier were looking south on the layout, meaning that the subjects would be backlit, so the lack of distinct shadows doesn't really concern me. If I do want shadows for a picture, I hang a "trouble light" from the drop ceiling, situating it where the sun would logically be in relation to each particular scene.
Been there. I had a nice image of my Niagara all composed, tested, a few samples, and then I took what I hoped would be the final postable one. One good look in this properly focused image showed......NOOOOOOO!! Silk all over one corner of the pilot.
Thanks for you generous compliment, Wayne. I know I have a way to go, including making my entire layout more detailed and credible, but I have to take the steps necessary to educate my brain and eye. Your own images, Charlie's and Joe's, and Jon's, and about 10 other regulars here keep showing me why I have to keep working at it.
BTW, that is still a killer photo.
I have aroom that is 27 feet by 10 1/2 feet, and I am using T8's in a suspended ceiling. I wanted to go with LED's but as stated already they are $$$$$$$$$$ right now. Give it a few years and they will be cheap enough for us to afford. They are an excellent source of light, use 1/3 the power of comparable lumen lights, and they last 20,000 hours or more.
The T8's give excellent light, and contrary to what some people think, you "can" most certainly place fluorescents on a dimmer, just make sure you buy dimmer for that use as opposed to incandescent dimmers.
Thanks everybody for taking the time to respond and show some pictures. i got some good and useful info from the posts. i'm also gathering ideas for lighting the bottom deck of the layout (which doctorwayne mentioned in his post) so if anybody's got info on that, i'm buyin'. thought it be easier to hammer this out now BEFORE i start the benchwork. might make it a little easier
appreciated and thanks again,
I use 100 watt equivalent Daylight CFLs in clamp on reflectors:
An important thing to remember about CFLs, particularly the large wattage ones, is they take several minutes to come up to full color and brightness. My CFLs are distinctly blue until they warm up:
And the same location after the CFLs warm up:
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
doctorwayne wrote:Nice views, Crandell, particularily the second one. Your post reminded me that I had neglected to mention that one of the main drawbacks of fluorescent lighting is that the light is very "flat", with generally no distinct shadows. This "flat" light also tends to hide a lot of detail, although a digital camera seems to be able to pick it up anyway. The drawback to that is that you sometimes get pictures like this: (you'll need to click on the photo to see this best) The cobweb on the loco wasn't visible when I was taking the photo, and it was even difficult to see when I went back to clean it up after seeing the photo. Most of the pictures that I posted here earlier were looking south on the layout, meaning that the subjects would be backlit, so the lack of distinct shadows doesn't really concern me. If I do want shadows for a picture, I hang a "trouble light" from the drop ceiling, situating it where the sun would logically be in relation to each particular scene.Wayne
Nice views, Crandell, particularily the second one. Your post reminded me that I had neglected to mention that one of the main drawbacks of fluorescent lighting is that the light is very "flat", with generally no distinct shadows. This "flat" light also tends to hide a lot of detail, although a digital camera seems to be able to pick it up anyway. The drawback to that is that you sometimes get pictures like this: (you'll need to click on the photo to see this best)
Wayne, that's a pretty decent photo. You're right that fluorescents kill distinct shadows. Someone was mentioning using another light to be a "sun" that would create some nice sharp shadows. When doing so one needs to take care that the lighting colors are compatible, that the 'sun' light and 'sky bowl' light are intensity balanced (probably trial and error), and that the 'sun' should be far enough away from the scene to make sharp (not fuzzy) shadows.
Please forgive me for being bold, but might I make a couple of suggestions regarding this photo?
1. Fluorescents are not continuous spectrum (black body radiators). They have "spikes" at different wavelengths. I'm guessing that a spike in your lighting really liked the blue in that guys work suit resulting in some extra saturation. You might try turning down the image saturation a tad in photo-shop. Even a CRI95 lamp (like a phillips TL-950), while better quality, still has spikes in its spectrum.
2. Lack of depth of field futher draws one's attention to the crossing guard. In a prototype photo of this scene one would expect most everything to either be in focus or be close to in focus. Was this taken at the smallest fNumber your camera is capable of? Could you move the camera back a couple of inches and crop it to the same picture (closer focus points have worse depth of field)? Could you use a bit wider angle lens (wider angle lenses have better depth of field at the same f-stop)? Or shoot focus-point bracketed shots and feed them into the helicon focus program.
I think this scene has the potential to be stunning leaving the viewer with the desire to leap into the photo, say "Hi" to the crossing guard and take a stroll over to those buildings. Well done!
Best regards,
selector wrote:Charlie, I know your work, so I won't be going toe-to-toe with you. But...I feel that the track lighting allows the placement of the various fixtures in an infinite series of linear positions, so the light spotting and multiple shadows can be reduced almost to insignificance. As for the bright spots, nature does that too. The sun pokes through holes in the clouds and will render parts of the landscape seemingly in shadow while others are brightly lit....'cuz that's exactly what is happening.Here are a couple of images that should help you to judge for yourself if multiple shadows and light spots of significant intensity are problematic. [snip] Here is a different shot with the five lights spaced as I normally have them and all in their normal aimed positions...the two outer aimed outward to cover the corners. No other lighting is present, and the image is merely cropped. It isn't the best sort to judge by, but I think the visible shadows are sufficiently clean-limbed to pass for realistic.[snip]-Crandell
Here are a couple of images that should help you to judge for yourself if multiple shadows and light spots of significant intensity are problematic.
[snip]
Hi Crandell,
Thanks for sharing your pictures!
Your second picture has a well lit foreground area with nice deep shadows. You apparently did a good job with positioning the lighting as I couldn't see any secondary shadows and the lighting does appear to be fairly even (the roundhouse seems to be not quite as brightly lit).
Might I suggest toning down the saturation just a wee bit in your pictures?
And if you've a mind to experiment, what would this scene look like if you converted it to black & white (maybe with a hint of a sepia tone)?
Looking foward to more of your work!
Thanks for the suggestions, Charlie, and for the kind words, too.
That photo was taken as part of a series on that particular loco doing its work switching local industries, so the out-of-focus background was used to avoid taking too much attention from the cobweb holder loco, although given the limitations of the camera, I had little choice. There is no manual f-stop adjustment on the camera, a fairly cheap Kodak, nor does it have interchangeable lenses. My daughter's camera, an earlier and even cheaper model which I used previously, had almost no changeable settings, but took photos with much better depth-of-field due to its shorter (wide angle) lense. Unfortunately, she refuses to part with it. When I use to photograph model trains with a film camera, I made a pinhole insert that fit over the rear element of my standard 55mm lense, and was able to get acceptable depth-of-field from 0"-72", which was the length of the diorama that I used before I had a layout.
I have used colour-balanced fluorescents on a previous layout, and while I liked the quality of the light, there simply wasn't enough of it to suit my tastes. I'd prefer to have an additional 6 or 8 fixtures lighting my layout in its current state, and with the lower lumen output of colour-balanced tubes, I'd probably have to double the number of fixtures currently in use. None of that is related to picture taking, though: I simply like the room to be bright. What I have is a compromise between "bright enough" and "affordable".
I have neither Photoshop nor Helicon, and with my limited computer skills, I'm sure that most of their features would be beyond my abilities. Instead, I simply shoot lots of pictures, then pick the ones that I like best to illustrate what I have in mind. As long as people find the images interesting or pleasing to look at, with not too many distractions, I'm content. Many of my photos also show unfinished areas in the background, so the limited depth can be an advantage, at times. Most of my better stuff is shot from a greater distance than was the one shown, so the depth-of-field is generally better. One area where I do hope to get some improvement is in close-ups to illustrate "how-tos". I've shot some acceptable ones, using my camera with an Optivisor in front of the lense, but it's fairly cumbersome. I'm going to borrow some screw-on close-up lenses from my brother's 35mm camera, to see if they can be easily adapted for use with my Kodak.
Here's a photo taken with my daughter's camera. While nothing in the scene is particularily close to the camera, the depth-of-field is pretty good, especially if you can ignore those overhead "northern lights" and the wooden "clouds" in the background.
Here's another one:
This one, taken with my own camera, has an acceptable depth-of-field, with only the extreme foreground blurred.
This view was taken with the pinhole attachment on my 35mm film camera. The power lines in the left foreground are on virtually the same plane as the lense, and the depth-of-field extended, where space allowed, to at least 6' beyond this. The "vignetting" at the corners is caused by the pinhole element. The long exposure times required made this most suitable to b&w photography, as the attachment gave an f-stop equivalent of 72.
Incidently, the overalls of the guy flagging the crossing are only marginally brighter than they appear in person. When painting LPBs, I mix a number of colours, then alter them as I make my way through the "crowd"of unpainted figures. This guy was lucky enough to get an almost new pair, while those painted earlier got more faded ones.
doctorwayne wrote:I have neither Photoshop nor Helicon, and with my limited computer skills, I'm sure that most of their features would be beyond my abilities. Instead, I simply shoot lots of pictures, then pick the ones that I like best to illustrate what I have in mind. As long as people find the images interesting or pleasing to look at, with not too many distractions, I'm content. Many of my photos also show unfinished areas in the background, so the limited depth can be an advantage, at times. Most of my better stuff is shot from a greater distance than was the one shown, so the depth-of-field is generally better. One area where I do hope to get some improvement is in close-ups to illustrate "how-tos". I've shot some acceptable ones, using my camera with an Optivisor in front of the lense, but it's fairly cumbersome. I'm going to borrow some screw-on close-up lenses from my brother's 35mm camera, to see if they can be easily adapted for use with my Kodak. Here's a photo taken with my daughter's camera. While nothing in the scene is particularily close to the camera, the depth-of-field is pretty good, especially if you can ignore those overhead "northern lights" and the wooden "clouds" in the background. [snip]Wayne
Hey! You've got a pretty nice looking layout there! While I have photoshop elements I don't pretend to be a complete expert with it. But one thing you can do with most any photo editor program is cropping. It would be relatively easy to crop the above photo making it look like cinemascope (wide and narrow) and eliminating the wooden clouds and the out of focus foreground leaving only the main portion of the picture.
To use helicon focus you need a camera with manual focus and a way to lock it in place (tripod?). Take several pictures from *exactly* the same location and orientation of the same scene but vary the focus point from as close as possible to furthest object in the scene. Fire up helicon focus, import the pictures you took, then 'run'. It will grind away for awhile (a fast computer is a benefit here!) and select the part of the scene from each picture that's got the best focus then it smooths them together. Helicon has a demo version that runs full featured for 30 days and afterthat it becomes crippled and will only save pictures of a maximum 4mpixel size. I splurged and bought a one year license for $30 something to give it a better try out.
It's not perfect, but its not at all hard to use - the default settings seem to work well. And it will let you get rid of those out of focus foreground railroad tracks. For example
Perhaps not the most flattering picture of my layout but check out how 'in focus' all the track work is...
Keep up the good work!
Charlie, thank you immensely for your thoughtful response. I am happy with your thinking because it turns out I had tripped over the various hue and contrast and brightness functions in Microsoft's Picture Manager just a few months ago, and had begun to use them to an extent. The one image you have identified was taken when I had not begun to use MPM.
I am pleased that you offer the advice to turn the rheostat down a few volts on the saturation.... When I first started to play with this function a few weeks prior to Christmas, I most definitely could see the improvement....although, again, not with this one photo.
The B&W and sepia thing I'll have to find out more about and learn what it can afford to my images. I like the idea in principle, and will look at it once I master all that I have at my fingertips these days. For example, when I dip saturation, other aspects become more salient, or more subdued, and I find myself getting into the processing deeper and deeper. Sometimes I have to back right out and start over....it isn't going well.
Thanks, once again, for your encouragement. I'll keep plugging away at improving the imagery, and of course what is imaged. I figure that it will be another couple of years before I see a quantum leap in my abilities. More work.
For a basement, the first thing I recommend is a dropped ceiling to minimize dust fallout.
Using the Suspended ceiling grid system you can easily install drop in recessed fluorescent fixtures.
My garage is 19 x 24 feet. It does have a celing so I installed a row of 5 recessed 4 foot 2 lamp T-8 fixures. The total wattage is less than 500 and the illumination is more than adequate. As far as photography is concerned, if I can correct for color values, I will just used localized floods with the overhead turned off.
Thanks for the additional info on Helicon, Charlie. I had a rough idea of how it worked, but was under the impression that it was well beyond my means. Thirty bucks doesn't sound too bad.
My picture that you used as an example was from a short thread that you can view, called
It explains (or makes an excuse for) that picture and several others.
You photo example does look good, and not just the focus aspect of it: I can picture a completed scene from just the basics that you have in place now. (It may not be the scene that you have in mind, but I can certainly see the possibilities)
selector The B&W and sepia thing I'll have to find out more about and learn what it can afford to my images. I like the idea in principle, and will look at it once I master all that I have at my fingertips these days. For example, when I dip saturation, other aspects become more salient, or more subdued, and I find myself getting into the processing deeper and deeper. Sometimes I have to back right out and start over....it isn't going well. Crandell
Crandell
Crandell, I have used a programme called Picture-It-Express to alter images. It can do cropping, re-sizing and some colour and balance adjustments, along with changing photos to b&w or sepia. For my limited abilities, it's pretty easy to use, and since I model the mid-to-late-'30s, I sometimes will post a picture or "story" thread using b&w images. To make the pictures appear more like old photographs, I first change the original to b&w (a one-click operation), then adjust both the brightness and contrast of the picture. I then alter the tint slightly to give it a yellowish aged effect. Here are a few examples:
The photos are not necessarily the same photo, but they were all taken to illustrate the same thread. The first one is one of the original colour shots: (as always, you can click on each photo for a largerview)
Here's a coloured one change to b&w:
And another to sepia:
The rest of the examples show the variances that you can include, such as yellowing:
Or fading and lessening of contrast:
All of the altered images have varying degrees of alterations, depending both on the effect that I want and, occasionally, to hide unwanted details in the background. The majority of responses posted to b&w photos are positive, but are generally fewer in number than responses to threads with coloured photos. To older guys like me, b&w often looks more appropriate to some situations (one guy replied that all photos of steam in action on period layouts should be b&w).
I have found that this same programme can benefit photos that are too dark, although my usual response is to simply shoot new photos. I've recently been scanning older negatives and slides of prototype trains, and the scanner allows this too, and can also restore colour that, on the negative, appears gone! No doubt that there's some useful technology available to us amateurs: it's up to us in how much of it we want to become involved.