New Streetlights in Corfe Mullen

This is a slightly nerdy post, but they've just put new streetlights up (or rather, replaced the old ones) around where I live.  I went out in the rain tonight to take a few pics to capture the differences before they replace the lot and I completely forget what they used to be like!

This is a very quick post - just a couple of picture.  The one above shows the difference between the old and new lights.  The new one is in the distance - a much whiter light, while the older is nearer and is distinctly orange.

I haven't read the details anywhere - in fact the information on the specific changes in Corfe Mullen is very sparse with the "Lights On In Dorset" website from SEC just saying "Coming Soon" - but I believe that the new lights are higher pressure sodium vapour, giving a bit more blue light (thus balancing aout the orange), and giving a significantly higher light output efficiency than the older lights.

At first sight, it appears the lights are much brighter, but I think this is just becuase the light is more directed - much more downards as the image above and below show.  It was raining tonight and the arc of light from the lamp can be clearly seen.

It remains to be seen whether they pollute the sky as much - it would be nice to think that the sky's will get clearer if these lights are installed all over the place.  But my suspicion is that they are driven purely by trying to reduce energy use (which is not such a bad thing in itself...)

From a photographic point of view, these were all taken with the 5D2 and the 24-70L at either f2.8 or f4 (for the first image only), hand held at either ISO 3200 or ISO 6400 with a little bit of NR applied in Lightroom.  Beautiful camera... :-)