Enlarger Bulbs - New EU regulations

[kiku]

....This is great for us as we refuse to shop in WalMart.......

Same for us and bravo to you. Howard Tanger

 

[firecracker]

And, last but not least, remember that all eco friendly bulbs are mercury vapor based. The mercury vapor produce a huge amount of ultra violet light which is converted to visible light by a fluorecent powder inside the tube. The mercury vapor is a nasty and toxic stuff we are unable to recycle as are the rare earth powders coated inside the tube. This will ensure backyard pollution for the next generation and an enormeous increase in mercury gas into the atmosphere... Eco friendly you said ?

Exactly! It just reminds me of the current state of the most of the useless digital consumer products...

 

[Mark Layne]

Oh well.

If worst comes to worst, I'm sure I could rig up some kind of shutter contraption inside the lamp housing on the Durst 138S. Or put the enlarger lens in a shutter.

Then just leave the lamp to warm up, open the shutter to expose, and shut it at the end of exposure.

Since a low-energy bulb produces less heat than an incandescent bulb with the same light output, it might even be better!

Ole
A hard alternative to putting a dozen bulbs in a drawer. I almost made the same mistake with mercury batteries.
It's been colder here in March than I ever remember it in 30 years -22C
One fellow said the other day 'if global warming's coming it aint fast enough'.
Don't know that I agree -but

Mark

 

[Ronald Moravec]

Can you imagine going into a walk in closet and turning on the light so you can find your clothing. But wait, I `ll have to stand there 5 minutes while the thing warms up. The alturnative is to just leave it on the time and thereby defeat the whole purpose. Then we get into the mercury. We can`t have mercury batteries anymore, but mercury light bulbs are just great.

Politicians amaze me. They all think just by passing a law they can defeat science.

We got it going with alcohol in gasoline. Half the energy content as gas so you get poor mileage and then you need to add the oil used to make the alcohol and grow the crops and it is a net loss.

They should be banned from passing laws.

 

[donbga]

Can you imagine going into a walk in closet and turning on the light so you can find your clothing. But wait, I `ll have to stand there 5 minutes while the thing warms up. The alturnative is to just leave it on the time and thereby defeat the whole purpose. Then we get into the mercury. We can`t have mercury batteries anymore, but mercury light bulbs are just great.

Politicians amaze me. They all think just by passing a law they can defeat science.

We got it going with alcohol in gasoline. Half the energy content as gas so you get poor mileage and then you need to add the oil used to make the alcohol and grow the crops and it is a net loss.

They should be banned from passing laws.

Ahh yes!
Back in the EU!
Back in the EU!
Back in the EUSSR!
You don't know how lucky you are boy.
Back in the EUSSR.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

In household lighting I have tried to use the flourescent replacements for tungsten bulbs, and I still use some, but the lifespan of each bulb is hardly much longer than a tungsten bulb for me. Thus the higher price of purchase can hardly be offset by longer usage. I don't like to leave the house lit up when I go to bed. While the actual life of the "tube" may be longer, the cheap ballast/starter circuitry in the bulb replacement types of lamps fails frequently.

 

[Ole]

In my part of the world, we need indoors lighting for about the same part of the year that we need indoors heating. So the "inefficiency" of tungsten bulbs contribute to the heating of the house. Net energy wasted = 0.

We have two outdoors lights, just to be able to find the house if we've been out in the evenings (which in midwinter start around 2 pm). Those are fluorescents, since they don't contribute to heating anything at all...

 

[john_s]

It is true that the Australian government has announced that filament bulbs will be unavailable in a few years. They had to appear to do something, because Oz is "on the nose" for being one of the two countries going it alone in not signing the Kyoto Agreement. It will eventually save about 1% of our energy use. Given the difficulty that I've had in trying to explain things to public servants here, I think that stocking up is the only way to go, rather than attempting to get an exemption.

 

[GeorgesGiralt]

Hello !
I heard today that in France, global cosumption for lighting is only 1% of total energy consuption.
So some of the Green people ask first to make savings in heating (about 25 to 30 % global if I heard correctly) transportation, fridge and freezer (a big percentage on home uses) before reducting the marginal 1% onthe bulbs...
They also said that we SHOULD use a switch to turn off the TV set, satellite decoders and the like staying ON in standby. The guy said that going from CRT to LCD or plasma TV was a disater because of the huge consumption difference with a comparable CRT device....
I think, this time we will see again the mercury cell ban.... Even Green people said that it was not so good an idea.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Liquid Crystal Displays can be pretty energy efficient, say 70W for a 23" LCD compared to 150W for a 21" CRT. Plasma monitors consume far more energy in general (maybe 500W); but plasma devices have other problems as well...

Tom.

 

[reub2000]

Can you imagine going into a walk in closet and turning on the light so you can find your clothing. But wait, I `ll have to stand there 5 minutes while the thing warms up. The alturnative is to just leave it on the time and thereby defeat the whole purpose. Then we get into the mercury. We can`t have mercury batteries anymore, but mercury light bulbs are just great.

You didn't forget the mercury released by coal power plants, did you? Also, CFLs do not take 5 minutes to warm up.

I do wonder how the spiky spectrum of these things would affect multigrade papers.

 

[Andy K]

Well thats the death of dimmer switch manufacturers.

 

[Monophoto]

Hello !
I heard today that in France, global cosumption for lighting is only 1% of total energy consuption.
So some of the Green people ask first to make savings in heating (about 25 to 30 % global if I heard correctly) transportation, fridge and freezer (a big percentage on home uses) before reducting the marginal 1% onthe bulbs...
They also said that we SHOULD use a switch to turn off the TV set, satellite decoders and the like staying ON in standby. The guy said that going from CRT to LCD or plasma TV was a disater because of the huge consumption difference with a comparable CRT device....
I think, this time we will see again the mercury cell ban.... Even Green people said that it was not so good an idea.

Georges:

One of the (few) things that I remember from engineering school was the quotation by Lord Kelvin -

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it: but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of a science, whatever the matter may be."

Your observation is very correct - many of the things that environmentalists (or representatives from any other special interest group) advocate fail to make any sense at all when you take the time to examine them in careful detail. They are intended to appeal to the emotions rather than to logic.

One example. We are told to replace incandescent lamps with CFLs, and to unplug our cell phone chargers when they are not actually being used to charge the phone. I'm an engineer, and I put number on things. And when I put numbers on the first of those recommendations, I fine that the higher economy of a 27w. CFL offsets its cost premium over a 100w incandescent lamp (both producing about 1500 lumens of light) at the prevailing cost of electricity in our area after 300 hours of operation. And based on that analysis, all of the lamps in our home that operate more than 300 hours per year are now CFL.

But the transformer that charges my cell phone is rated 6 watts. And assuming that it is a fairly inefficient design, the no load losses should be about 1%. At the same energy cost rate used in the CFL analysis, that cell phone charger is consuming about US$0.08 of electricity per year.

So I can accept the CFL argument because the numbers make sense. But that amount of energy wasted because my cell phone charger remains plugged in continuously is microscopic by comparison.

The point - let's deal with facts and not emotional exaggeration.

 

[GeorgesGiralt]

"The point - let's deal with facts and not emotional exaggeration."
I do agree, but I must add that politicians (remember it's election time in France now) are urged to do something for the planet. So it is easy to go CFL because *everybody* has almost one light at home than to go for CO2 retention at power plant station, or things like that...
Do what they can _see_ not what _we_ have to do....

 

[GeorgesGiralt]

Oh, I forgot;
In France there is a debate because some people urge to use what they call "flexifuel" in our cars. it's petrol mixed with methylated spirit extracted from beetroot. They say to us that Bresil use such fuel for cars since ages..;
What they forgot to tell us is that Bresil take sugar from cane and that's pertty efficient. Beetroot in contrary is mainly water. So the energy cost to get the sugar out perform the energy you get from the methylated spirit !
On the other hand peasants using corn and soja to make oil for Diesel engines are forbiden to do so unless they use it in their engines in private land only... All it take is a press to extract the oil and a low tech Diesel engine..... Not good for the industry, Sir.

 

[Antje]

Folks, we don't have a single filament bulb in our house and lead a happy life. We had a few problems with cheap fluorescent lights at the beginning, they failed pretty quickly. But since we switched to a major manufacturer, they last forever. I couldn't even say where we keep the replacement bulbs. Also, the warm-up time only means that they reach the highest light output after five minutes. They are bright from the start.
A major concern was the colour temperature, but the manufactures started to produce lamps with a pleasing colour temp years ago. And a really nice thing for me, the macro shooter with an insect fixation, is that insects no longer are grilled in our torchiere.

Give it a chance. You might like it.

Antje

 

[copake_ham]

Georges:

One of the (few) things that I remember from engineering school was the quotation by Lord Kelvin -

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it: but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of a science, whatever the matter may be."

Your observation is very correct - many of the things that environmentalists (or representatives from any other special interest group) advocate fail to make any sense at all when you take the time to examine them in careful detail. They are intended to appeal to the emotions rather than to logic.

One example. We are told to replace incandescent lamps with CFLs, and to unplug our cell phone chargers when they are not actually being used to charge the phone. I'm an engineer, and I put number on things. And when I put numbers on the first of those recommendations, I fine that the higher economy of a 27w. CFL offsets its cost premium over a 100w incandescent lamp (both producing about 1500 lumens of light) at the prevailing cost of electricity in our area after 300 hours of operation. And based on that analysis, all of the lamps in our home that operate more than 300 hours per year are now CFL.

But the transformer that charges my cell phone is rated 6 watts. And assuming that it is a fairly inefficient design, the no load losses should be about 1%. At the same energy cost rate used in the CFL analysis, that cell phone charger is consuming about US$0.08 of electricity per year.

So I can accept the CFL argument because the numbers make sense. But that amount of energy wasted because my cell phone charger remains plugged in continuously is microscopic by comparison.

The point - let's deal with facts and not emotional exaggeration.

But it is the cumulative effect of those microscopic wastages (i.e. phantom loads) that, when aggregated across all users, begins to become of concern.

I am essentially in the same position as you are in that I have m/l replaced all incandescents (at least as they burn out) with CFLs because there is a very significant reduction in electric consumption. And I similarly always leave the cell phone charger plugged in. But if the charger or its power cord had a convenient to use on/off switch I'd probably turn it off when not in use.

It does seem that provision of simply on/off switches on many devices would not be difficult or expensive to provide and would then at least give the consumer the choice (other than unplugging the TV from the wall etc.) of elimintating a phantom load should she/he want to do so.

 

[Steve Smith]

It does seem that provision of simply on/off switches on many devices would not be difficult or expensive to provide and would then at least give the consumer the choice (other than unplugging the TV from the wall etc.) of elimintating a phantom load should she/he want to do so.

Which is exactly what most equipment was fitted with before remote control took over.

I think it would be good to have this fitted again.

In the UK, most of our mains sockets are fitted with switches. Am I correct in thinking that the US socket is not switched?

Steve.

 

[haris]

I belive in Europe too only UK have mains socket with swiches...

Well, if you want switches for yours gadgets, and you dont know to install swich on power cord of your gadget, use extension cord with preinstalled swich. For 1 or 2 EUROS it is not expancive. I do that

I do that with my computer too. And I think power unit of computer don't like that, I had to but new one after 6 months...

 

[copake_ham]

Which is exactly what most equipment was fitted with before remote control took over.

I think it would be good to have this fitted again.

In the UK, most of our mains sockets are fitted with switches. Am I correct in thinking that the US socket is not switched?

Steve.

Steve,

You are partially correct. Most outlets in the US are not switched. Some are, usually in living rooms and bedrooms, so that a floor lamp (for example) can be turned on and off from a wall switch.

I belive in Europe too only UK have mains socket with swiches...

Well, if you want switches for yours gadgets, and you dont know to install swich on power cord of your gadget, use extension cord with preinstalled swich. For 1 or 2 EUROS it is not expancive. I do that

I do that with my computer too. And I think power unit of computer don't like that, I had to but new one after 6 months...

haris,

To encourage conservation you need to make it easy for the consumer to do so. While either of your solutions "work", they put obstacles (albeit, small ones) in the path to ease of conservation and thus lessen the likliehood many people will bother.

 

[fschifano]

In the UK, most of our mains sockets are fitted with switches. Am I correct in thinking that the US socket is not switched?

Steve.

Correct. Virtually all mains sockets are not switched.