I’ve used the LED strip version of these and they are great for varying the time of day/mood effects. I’ve had them for a couple of months now and they are great for my shelf layout, however I don’t know if they’re quite ready to light a full layout. I bought mine from
www.barlighting.com they specialize in various LED lighting techniques and cost around $120 bucks (I added a 4 bar light extension pack). The lights came with an IR controller that has the ability to make and save any number of color combinations via included “DIY” buttons. Here are some pros and cons, plus a bunch of pictures.
Pros
Easy to Install
You can create any color desirable with custom controls
Strips or rope lighting is cheaper other forms of point LED lighting
Energy efficient
Cons
Only moderate light output even at maximum setting
Very poor lighting for photos with most cameras (you’ll have to do a lot of adjustment with the white balance to get the pictures to match what our eyes see)
Easily washed out by other sources of external lighting (i.e. ceiling lights or windows) these work best with the lights.
Expensive – as this technology progresses the cost will come down significantly but at present time they are proportionally quite overpriced.
Here are some general pics of the color change – note, the LEDs are lighting the wall however each color is significantly “washed out” due to sun coming through the closed blinds in my office window. To get the correct colors we see with our eyes I had to take the photos with my friends Cannon rebel as most point and short/iphone cameras will result in an excessive violet hue to the picture.
IR controller
Sunset (light orange)
Incandescent
Fluorescent light
Blue Violet
Mounted Strips
White
Purple
All the pictures above were taken with the Cannon Rebel, however those below were taken with my iphone. For night photos I set the lights to a deep dark blue which pretty effectively simulates a moon lit night. You can also adjust the brightness level independent of color selection to make the scene as dark/light as you want. Since I conduct night operations this works out pretty well, one of the things I really like is that it clearly illustrates engine headlights and any signals present (which I haven’t installed yet). Also, I apologize for the poor quality of the night photos but these is a side effect of taking picture with an iphone as it tends to “bleed” various details and colors together at low light levels.
Night Operations (flash light is being used to read car numbers for switching – the blue is darker than what the camera shows)
Iphone night blue
Finally, as I mentioned above, most cameras don’t correctly portray what the lights actually look like to our eyes as can be seen below. The lights below are set on “full white” which would be equal to fluorescent lighting unless noted, however every picture appears markedly violet.
Iphone “Daylight” (incandescent white)
Iphone Violet tenting
So in the end do I recommend these – yes……….if you have a very small area to light or want to strategically place various lighting affects around the layout (i.e. the sun setting or rising behind mountains) however I don’t feel they are ready for a prime time full layout at this point in time. They would be good for night effects but do require some sort of valence.
If you want to hear more about this you could listen to
http://www.modelrailradio.com show #25 “Let There Be Light” as they have a in-depth discussion about the various ways to light layouts with some emphasis on LED’s midway through the show. I hope this helps as I was going to post about these at a future date but you happened to beat me to the punch!
Best regards,
Erik
