Nosing round the neighbours

Back in the seventies, when the neighbours bought a new piece of electrical equipment, it was the done thing to find an excuse to pop round to have a good nose. We have so many gadgets and replace them so often these days that if we were to do the same, life would become one constant round of inspections. However, clubs do not get new floodlights every day, so with a game at Marine that did not clash with one for Prescot Cables, I thought I would take a look.

Marine needed to replace their floodlight system over the summer (rather than the bulb and head replacement Prescot undertook last year), as the electrics were showing their age, causing a couple of fires, fortunately without injury or extensive property damage. The new system has corner pylons, replacing an arrangement with 4 pylons along each side. The new pylons have 7 lamps each, which means the lightest area is at the corner of the pitch and along the wings, with the darker spots being in the goalmouth and centre circle. The modern heads are designed to reflect light that would have gone upwards or in unwanted directions, such as on to the windows of neighbouring houses.

Looking at the documentation supplied to Sefton Council with the planning application, the luminance for the first 100 hours is 438 lux, with the long term value (for 4000 hours) of 350 lux, assuming appropriate cleaning and maintenance. I had not realised the light deteriorates after the first 100 hours and remains reasonably constant after that, I thought the rate was more even over time.

The lights were on for the start of the game, which I was not expecting, although the weather was quite changeable, so having them on from the start meant they would be fully warmed up if the cloud cover increased.

A shot from the beginning of the game

They proved very effective, I was getting shutter speeds of 1/320s right up to the end of the game at 9.15 with ISO mostly between 1600 and 3200 using the shutter priority mode, with the best results being from near the touchline, and from the edge of the penalty area.

Of course, the real test is not on an evening in July when the lights are new, it is on a wet Tuesday night in November, after the first 100 hours, with the opposition in dark red with black shorts. As this is the only local ground with lights to the 350 lux standard, I shall be back when Prescot do not have a game to check them under the conditions for which they were designed.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here, in a slightly odd order, as the date and time on the camera decided to reset itself (I think it may have got to 100,000 shutter cycles) - they can also been seen in the correct order on the club website.