Ott lites are no doubt pleasant to use for tying, but they are rather over-hyped in terms of their color performance. I work in the area of color imaging, and we use a quality measure of color illumination called the Color Rendering Index. Wikipedia has an article [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index:d326c]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index[/url:d326c] One might think that Ott Lite would be flaunting this number for their products. Well you won't find any mention of it on their web site, [url=http://www.ottlite.com/:d326c]http://www.ottlite.com/[/url:d326c] and that's because while it's not awful, it's not particularly good. Someone else--a competitor who does cite Ott Lite's CRI number is at [url=http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/cri_explained.htm:d326c]http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/cri_explained.htm[/url:d326c]

Mike

[This message has been edited by Mike McGuire (edited 19 March 2006).]