Your opinion, anything particularly interesting in these short-arc lamps? I see one on sale locally for about $10, is it worth to get?

Hello,
If I recall correctly these have longer life than most other entertainment MH lamps of their time. I can look it up however i find the time. For only $10 id get them.
Honestly its a lamp I am still locking for.

Best regards,

Alex

Yes thanks, will try to pick this one. These are really made to last a reasonable time (~2K hours) while maintaining short-arc optical properties. As far as I understand, can be run on a simple inductive ballast off 230V line, plus an ignitor of course.


 

The Osram HSD is equivalent to Philips MSD and Sylvania BriteArc /D lamps.  It is a long life version of the more common HMI, Philips MSR and Sylvania BA250/2 lamp.  The arc length is increased somewhat and the arc tube loading is reduced, so as to extend the life.  They were developed for use in small low-cost moving heads used in restaurants, cafes etc to satisfy part of the market that was not really so interested in precision optical control, and where burning hours were longer and therefore a longer life lamp was helpful to reduce operating costs.  Due to the quite low performance, these long life lamps did not become popular in professional applications.