The Lamp Room

Just to complicate matters…

The lantern on the right looks like a SOX, whilst the left hander looks unmistakably mercury.

They are however both LED (the ‘SOX’ being one of my homemade pseudo lamps. The ‘mercury’ is a daylight / natural white LED GLS (from Asda I think).

Put together though, the combination is pretty believable and for my small back garden the relatively low output is ideal.

Photos don't preserve color rendering perception (because the real scene is encoded across the sensitivity spectrum of the camera detectors first, and re emitted in the spectrum of screen subpixels). So the ability to tell from a picture if a light would be distinguishable from real Merc or SOX in person is limited

This is not to say that it can't be convincing, atleast a good approximation. (And especially so if the SOX can be made with a somewhat underdriven SON or monochrome Yellow LEDs)

Yes, I agree with you on ‘how’ the camera actually sees colour, often being at variance with what you actually see with your own eyes. Plus, cameras aren’t subjective in what appears in front of them (only the person who views the resultant image can do that).

The pseudo Sox lamps I’ve made use 4W double ended ‘opal’ LED striplights. Connected to the BY22 lamp cap, the actual colour is via a piece of LEE theatrical polyester (L653 / Lo Sodium) which is slid behind the opal diffuser of the striplight.

When lit on its own, the effect is believable. When compared with my 35W SOX lantern, the pseudo lamp is obviously less bright and actually looks like a proper SOX lamp which is losing its vacuum and not fully running up.

Love that photo, the SOX is incredibly accurate!, nice positioning of these two as well , there was always something special about the old street lighting between trees!
I find the DIALL Decor LED filament lamps, (seen here in a Beta 5), be a good replica for the SON lamp!