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Re: flourescent tubes




On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Richard Sexton wrote:

> I'm seeing a bunch of statements here about fluorescent tubes that leave
> me shaking my head.
>
> "Plant and aquarium" tubes are gro-lux wide spectrum. They're pink,
> not yellow or orange. Regular gro lux is purple.

Gro-lux and Gro-lux wide spectrum are made by Sylvania, not GE.  That
aside, I've had GE PL/AQ and Sylvania Gro-lux Wide Spectrum tubes on tanks
in the same room.  They do not appear similar, so maybe they're selling
different PL/AQ bulbs there than they are here.

[snip]

> I can't imagine what would make poeple think C50's or PL-AQ's
> look "yellow" or "orange". A warm white might give you this
> impression, but a C50 has a decidely blue tinge to it, and the
> PLAQ's are quite pink.

Warm white lights appear yellow to me, but C50's appear white (not
blue-ish) and PL/AQ's appear yellow, but not as yellow as warm whites.  My
impression of the color of PL/AQ may be "colored" because one of our tanks
that uses the PL/AQ is next to a north window, so the light I'm comparing
it to is very blue.  The other is against an east window, so it doesn't
have that comparison problem, and it still looks a little yellow.

Possibly one reason we have different descriptions of light color is that
we use different standards for reference.  I think I use daylight as my
color reference.  Our daylight here in the high desert is very clear and
probably has a lower color temperature than what many people are
accustomed to. I find the sunlight in Houston (for instance) to be subdued
and bluish by comparison even on what locals there call a clear day.
Certainly the color of sunlight changes to the north, as well.  In Ontario
your sunlight (or whatever passes for sunlight there) might give you very
different expectations than might this brilliant stuff pouring through my
southeast-facing office window.

Some of us may use office light as a standard for comparison.  That's the
only way I can imagine anyone saying (as Steve Pushak did in this volume)
that cool white fluorescents are fine for viewing aquatic plants.  The
blue tint and flat color rendition of a cool white fluorescent drives me
nuts.

>
> I think some of you people are color blind! :-) >

Well, there's that too.  But my color vision was tested recently, and its
just fine, thank you. (insert your favorite smiley).


Roger Miller