Lamp (Light bulb) Photos

One of my "other" hobbies is the collection and storage of a small amount of light bulbs or lamps. When they enter the collection I do my best to photograph them in an attractive or glamorous manner.. here are some of my best attempts.

First up is a very old incandescent carbon filament lamp I acquired which I think, going by the handpainted numbers on the stem, is from 1927. it's being run in series with the two GEC 150W incandescents, as its an odd voltage and it'd end up getting fried on our mains.





Something newer, but perhaps only slightly so, is an old Siemens Projection lamp with a tungsten filament.




Next up is an MB/U lamp (clear mercury vapour). I have three of these and they are actually US lamps that I had posted over here, the bulb shape is slightly longer and thinner than our elliptical ones. I love that you can see the arc detail if you dim the photo down enough, and the light these give off is a really eerie crisp whitish-blue. Some parts of the world, namely certain places in the US, still use clear mercury in street lighting.




Here is the arc tube of a 400W High Pressure Sodium lamp. This was lit on a 70W ballast to give me enough time to photograph it in its preliminary firing stage. Running it at the correct power does not produce a show nearly as pretty as this. If you look closely, you can actually see the arc running through the starting gas mixture, as the sodium has not yet vaporised into the arc stream.




And finally, a shot of my favourite type of lamp in lighting, a low pressure sodium lamp of the SOX variety. These use a neon-argon penning gas to help strike the arc which causes the bulb to burn pink for around 10 minutes. the sodium metal then gradually vaporises into the arc stream and it turns a strong yellow - 589nm the same as our yellow lasers. Colour rendering is literally non existent in these but their efficacy is still unsurpassed by any other man made lighting technology today.



Enjoy. I have more where that came from...

trencheel303 said:

Enjoy. I have more where that came from...

Click to expand...

And enjoy, I did! Thanks for sharing

More please

I think you probably already know, but for those that don't, Mike also has a wide collection of glass stuff Mike's Electric Stuff

Something I took a while ago... A 35W automotive HID during cooldown

Nice Pictures : D

low pressure sodium would be my favourite too followed by mercury .

That mercury one looks fantastic
Guess I know what my next random purchase might be.

A note to the newbs: All electric discharge lamps require a ballast.
Plugging directly into mains will result in a condition known as "acute borosilicate shards to the face"

trencheel303 said:

One of my "other" hobbies is the collection and storage of a small amount of light bulbs or lamps. When they enter the collection I do my best to photograph them in an attractive or glamorous manner.. here are some of my best attempts.

First up is a very old incandescent carbon filament lamp I acquired which I think, going by the handpainted numbers on the stem, is from 1927. it's being run in series with the two GEC 150W incandescents, as its an odd voltage and it'd end up getting fried on our mains.

Enjoy. I have more where that came from...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the pics.

Very nice lights.

You can still get an edison style G80 E27 bulb which looks very similar to the first one and have an amber glow

I love the looks of them and they work great for indoor soft mood lighting.

Google Image Result for http://g02.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1j2EbHpXXXXawaXXXq6xXFXXXY/Antique-Retro-Vintage-Edison-Bulb-Light-E27-Incandescent-Light-Bulb-ST64-G80-Squirrel-cage-Filament-Bulb.jpg

Yes you can, I have some but you can't beat the real thing for Posterity.

And as Cy says plugging discharge lamps into the mains will, if the lamp lights, result in a bang. I'd suggest learning a bit about them first, I waited a month or so before getting any HIDs so I'd know how to work one. Which is unusual for me lol

..
a better, sharper view of the projection lamp I posted above




and another one, this time with all the packaging and marketing material




A Westinghouse Lifeguard 100W with a freshly polished cap, completely NOS and with a /C phosphor, the original "colour improved" phosphor before DX




A lamp show on my mantelpiece .. the two 150W lamps actually ballast the others that run off this circuit, and the SOX is being run off an 11W CFL ballast. It's very underdriven which means its dim enough to enjoy without bathing the room in very bright light. The bulb behaves oddly in service (flickers) so is probably coming to end of life.




A 250W deluxe mercury ballasted by four 150W GLS (general lighting service) lamps. Total current combined is 2.6A which is the spec of the MBF's arc tube. When the MBF warms up it sucks a lot of the current away from the GLS causing them to dim, but their inherent resistive nature prevents thermal runaway and allows you to ballast HIDs. I suspect you could do this with heater elements as well.




And finally.. four Philips SLs. I have 9(?) of these now, all the sizes and some of them totally untouched in their boxes. One or two are less well treated and actually one gets used daily in one of my fixtures. Awesome magnetic ballasted switchstart CFLs that run on and on and on.

We had a lot of those before and they kept on blowing thermal fuses. Must be the hot tropical climate.

I really like that carbon filament bulb, do you have any extras? Lol. Thanks in advance

Only got one so far. There's some blue ones I'm looking at on ebay but haven't yet committed to one.

Thanks for sharing these. I like the clear mercury vapor bulb. Very nice pics. +REP

trencheel303 said:

Yes you can, I have some but you can't beat the real thing for Posterity.

And as Cy says plugging discharge lamps into the mains will, if the lamp lights, result in a bang. I'd suggest learning a bit about them first, I waited a month or so before getting any HIDs so I'd know how to work one. Which is unusual for me lol

Click to expand...

I AGREE, but sometimes its nice to put in a $3 light bulb instead of a $1000 one - And also not have to worry about the power supply being wrong!!!!

Personally, I'm a fan of anything with light and glass. I've got a very old curly Geissler Tube. Dekatrons, Magic Eyes, Nixies.

But with any of this stuff the requirements are pretty broad to run different styles of these tubes.

Thanks for showing these. I appreciate that someone takes the time to learn these and share with us.

Clear medium pressure mercury vapour. Rarer than rocking horse shit, these fell out of use decades ago when high pressure mercury vapour, which was more efficient and could be burned horizontal, took over. I am fortunate enough to own this one, and fired it up a handful of times to photograph the arc. it's mildly observable with laser goggles, and is like having your own personal steampunk style lightning bolt container.




Atlas lamp. 400W, same size as the medium pressure, just with a smaller, higher pressure arc tube. Same colour, same control gear, more efficient and tougher. This is the kind of device that would replace the above, and would then eventually give way to elliptical and coated mercury vapour lamps, the kind that are a dime a dozen today.



A large (and rare) Osram-GEC 300W incandescent lamp in pearl finish. Pearl lamps were common in the consumer market, but weren't generally found above 200 or so Watts on the industrial side of things. I am told that a pearl lamp of this size was a rare and uncommon practice, usually by special order. I also have the 500W variant, which uses the same bulb size, clear, and a different filament.



A somewhat "modern" carbon filament lamp here ballasting a 20W T12 high fidelity halophosphor tube. The carbon filament lamp is actually a heater of 130W and is probably within 40 years old. It's made by GEC a British company that once had the monopoly on almost anything electrical and now doesn't even exist. The tube has over 90% CRI and is a neutral white colour known as Kolorite. I find it too sickly as I like warm lights, but the quality of light from it is superb.

According to this thread, your fluorescent tube is either NOT efficient, NOT 90 CRI, or NOT halophosphor. We ditched halophosphor for a reason.

About the SOX lamp:

..."but their efficacy is still unsurpassed by any other man made lighting technology today."

Look into sulfur arc lamps. Even more efficient than SOX. They tend to suffer from very short electrode life though so some of the newer types are RF pumped.

SOX sure are pretty though, especially when they're warming up.