I'm currently designing some outdoor softball field lighting for a municipality. I'm using DHID from Accendo Electronics. Accendo pairs their ballasts with lamps from EYE, Venture, or Sylvania. In the 575 Watt lamp size Venture makes a lamp with 90+ CRI. However, the 575 watt lamp just doesn't have the punch needed for this lighting design. In order to get the sheer amount of lumens I need to use a 750 or 1,000 watt lamp. In doing so my CRI drops to below 70. I love high CRIs (even though the rest of world barely notices), especially in an outdoor sports application where uniform colors are important.
It's my understanding that the reason why is the color rendering is poor is because the higher wattage lamps lack the color spectrum to render specific colors. So it would seem that if I add merely one lamp of a high CRI the spectrum would become available and colors would render well.
Of course, that seems to run counter to common sense. If I have eight poor rendering lamps and one lamp of less light output but good CRI, I'd think I'd still get a bad CRI.
So which is it, can one lamp provide the necessary spectrum or not?
It's my understanding that the reason why is the color rendering is poor is because the higher wattage lamps lack the color spectrum to render specific colors. So it would seem that if I add merely one lamp of a high CRI the spectrum would become available and colors would render well.
Of course, that seems to run counter to common sense. If I have eight poor rendering lamps and one lamp of less light output but good CRI, I'd think I'd still get a bad CRI.
So which is it, can one lamp provide the necessary spectrum or not?