LED lights

Introduction

Most LED lights are pretty bad. Better LEDs can be found in video/cinema applications, or for museum exhibits. Photographers do not care much about LEDs as they do not tend to use continuous lights.

Most household lamps use E26/E27 sockets, and the most common bulbs are A19, A21, and A23. Every lamp will take A19, many will take A21, but A23 is larger and requires thorough investigation whether it's supported by indoor lamps.

Power and energy

LEDs are pretty energy efficient, but the power density is pretty low. If you need high power, incandescent or halogen is the only way to go. In general, this means you need more LED bulbs for household applications, and it's very likely new lamps supporting more bulbs are required. LEDs with more accurate color tend to have less power and be less energy efficient than other LEDs.

Light output

How many lumens do you need? My incandescent lights have the following specs:

Philos	Incandescent	300 W	4850 lm
Osram	Halogen	150 W	2870 lm
Philips	Halogen	105 W	1980 lm
Philips	Incandescent	40 W	405 lm

Color rendering

The the most common standard is CRI. Unfortunately, CRI is pretty useless, but consumer manufacturers only specify CRI. You want something with CRI over 95. An important color not taken into account by CRI is R9. You want something with R9 over 90.

A much better standard is TCLI. You want something with TCLI over 90.

TCLI results

• TLCI Results as supplied by Alan Roberts
• Television Lighting Consistency Index 2012 (actually results are from 2018