fluorescent lamps color-shift as they age, unfortunately.
Just yesterday I was at the Dollar Store and they had 4 pack CLF’s for $1.00. Even though they are probably inferior somehow (lots of Dollar Store stuff are damaged or screwy somehow) I bought a box. We’ll see.
When I worked in an art gallery, we tried various lighting for the art and none of the LED or of course CFLS came close to lighting as well as incandescent. Not even close.
This is me… I bought a medium-sized batch of incandescents because CFLs are terrible and LEDs were $40 per. I’ve spent most of the last year switching over to LED as they burn out, now that recent sales have had 60W equivalents under $5 and 100W equivalents under $15.
I was always on board with the benefits of modern bulbs, but for whatever reasons (maybe my particular colorblindness?), the color shift on the fluorescents has always been both obvious and infuriating. Very glad affordable LEDs are finally here.
Why would you think they were hoarded for price reasons? The CFLs were more cost effective. It was never about the cost. It was about the light quality. The cost factored in only in that it cost a lot to try and see if they were any good.
Well, for most people. We did factor in cost, because we got them really cheap since my dad’s work could no longer sell them. (We get a lot of stuff this way.) We’re just now running out.
With my Insteon smart dimmer system I can do that with my incandescent bulbs.
Except you later could get CFLs with the exact same light. Just not the cheap ones.
The danger as I see it with LED’s is a race to the bottom; it does seem like where we are headed. Gradually sacrificing light quality for a cheaper bulb, also sacrificing bulb life in the process. Perhaps it will get increasingly hard to find high quality LED’s.
The OP’s $2.50/ per LED bulb seems to be exactly that and would reinforce the reason to hoard the IC’s.
I think you have that absolutely backwards. The earliest LEDs were very expensive and had relatively poor quality (lousy CRI, lifespan issues, odd shapes and light patterns) and almost every time I look at them, they’ve gotten better in every respect while the prices continue to fall.
Sure, there will always be a bargain-basement tier, the way you can buy Hong Ding Wang incandescent bulbs in 8-packs at the Dollar Store… and will need all 8, as they have a lifespan of a month and two will be bad out of the package.
But I predict that brand-name LED bulbs will settle at the under-$5 mark with quality good enough for most users, and only those who demand better CRI or maximum dimmability will pay more ($10). Just like it is now, with ‘full spectrum’ and ‘daylight’ bulbs and tubes.
It’s like the great CRT crisis of ca. 1990 - CRT monitors were getting so big so fast there was a shortage of quality tubes for them. Factories ramped up, and soon you could buy a 24-inch for $200. The big flatscreen crisis of ca. 2000 - factories ramped up, and flatscreen TVs and monitors can be had for peanuts. The great LED bulb crisis… get back to me this fall.
ETA: You’re probably right in that there is a race to capture as much of the market as possible in this early, frantic phase. The market will have a huge bubble as people buy LED replacements as they fall in price… but think about 3-4 years out: everyone’s using bulbs with vastly extended lifespans. The market is going to get very selective and very dog-eat-dog. Those who sold as many bulbs as they could in the first phase are going to be the big winners.
There was a compact fluorescent that had 100 CRI?
No matter what the brand, I’m able to pick out a CFL (or LED) upon entering the room even if it’s in a lamp. There’s still something “off” about the light compared to an incandescent, whether it’s the high frequency flickering or a subtle Kelvin difference or the fact that the light is produce by phosphors in specific wavelengths, I don’t know.
And to the OP, hoarding bulbs was never about not being able to buy an LED bulb for $2.50. Any one of us could have predicted that would happen, it’s about principal and light quality. At the time of the bulb ban it was pretty easy to buy a CFL for $2.50 and we still didn’t. LEDs and CFLs vs incancescents are polar opposites in their strengths and weaknesses so there will always be people with preferences outside of economics
Too bad you missed your calling as a spectrophotometer.
Color me skeptical.
I’d love to set up a double-blind test and see how accurate you really are.
I’m still 100% incandescent/halogen. With several fixtures on traditional SCR dimmers, many 3-way sockets, and a few simple on/offs.
Reading about all the progress above, I’m willing to experiment with LEDs for the non-dimmed fixtures. Where can I find a decent education on the choices and issues that is relatively up to date? I’m not interested in reading somebody’s opinion about 2012 reality. I want to learn about today’s reality.
I’m extremely aware of flicker and strongly partial to warmer light color. I run most of my dimmable incandescents at 80-90% specifically for the color. I detest the cheapo-CFL colored light I’m stuck with in hotel rooms.
Any thoughts/ suggestions?
I’m still hoarding candles.
Cree
They have three notable ones. The “TW” series has a glass globe with a bluish tint that has the best CRI. The newer plastic “4Flow” plastic series have lower CRI but throw light downwards due to the lack of a heatsink, which is important to avoid looking odd in some fixtures. The older glass ones have the heatsink to block light and a lower CRI, but may last longer than the newer ones.
Some people like Phillips also. I found that they’re the most indistinguishable from incandescent from a distance in something like a table lamp where the odd form doesn’t matter. (The hue is spot on, whereas Cree seems slightly too pink), but they don’t seem to render colors as well as Cree.
There are tube fluorescents well over 96.
I don’t know of any light source short of the fusion-powered one on a clear day, or halogen ones of nearly equal power and heat, that hit 100. If it’s worth that last few percent to run photography monolights in your house…
My family teases me about my box of incandescent bulbs in the basement, but I don’t regret buying the bulbs. They’ll be used. The quality of light matters greatly to me. I see the differences clearly, and bad lighting really bothers me. People vary in visual sensitivity, just as they do with how sensitive their noses are. I also run a freakish number of lights on dimmers. I hope other light sources continue to improve while dropping in price.
Perhaps, indeed the laws of Physics operate differently at your house. 
Next time I’m in Mexico I think I’ll pick up about a dozen incandescent 100 watters, simply because we have a couple light fixtures that don’t work well with the LEDs (which are too heavy for the arched suspended globes). Otherwise, we’re replacing incandescents with LEDs as they burn out and I’m enjoying not having to replace them.
That said, I got two Cree LED bulbs that burned out in a year, which is annoying. They were the bigger, more expensive ones, too. Replaced them with a different brand.
You’re going to have to provide a cite for that. Last I checked…in terms of A/B comparisons where the bulb is hidden, incandescents are defeated by the nicer CFL brands and the higher end Phillips LED bulbs. You can get better light and save more than the bulb costs in power.
I have an LED fixture in my bathroom that has a time lag of about 0.5 seconds from switch-on to when the light comes on. It’s not a warm-up time like CFLs, but maybe some setup time required for the voltage conversion to kick in or something. I don’t know why it is but the effect is very noticeable.
This study says the small difference in time is not negligible. Do you have a link to one that says it is not?