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Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for better lighting than the ancient desk light I'm currently using. About all I've gotten from the research I've done is that I should be using daylight bulbs in a 5800-6500K spectrum (or the fluorescent equivalent), and that having multiple lights from different angles will help get rid of shadows on the model.

Should I just pick up some cheap desk lamps for this? Or am I better suited to getting a nice single unit I can position above my painting area?

Cheap desk lamps with led bulbs

I use a fluorescent magnifying lamp, it's a tad harsh

I've never had a problem with a pair of IKEA Tertial desk lamps fitted with daylight bulbs.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
I've never had a problem with a pair of IKEA Tertial desk lamps fitted with daylight bulbs.

Would the matched 5000K daylight bulbs Ikea offers do the trick here? Or would I be better served going with another option

I happen to have a recent pic because someone was asking a similar question last week (that thread has several responses if you want). I have done both... for a long time I used two cheap desk lamps with LED bulbs. I had Daylight bulbs (around 5000K) but backed off to a Soft White (around 3500K) because it seemed too harsh. Now I've added a magnifying lamp (back to 5000K) that I use in combination with my old desk lamps. The little ones are fine for working on big stuff like cutting foam or painting terrain. For minis I power up the magnifier. I kind of wish I'd bought the version that had both brightness and temperature control on the LEDs. Both options exist on the Brightech LightView Pro 2-in-1. The photo below has all three lights on.

I have a ceiling mounted 2 foot by 2 foot daylight LED light above my painting table, plus 3 daylight task lamps around to minimize shadows. But the best option I’ve seen is some variant of the LED arch like the one here:

http://www.brookhammer.com/2018/06/tutorial-arch-light-setup/

Valete,

JohnS

I like the idea of a purpose built lighting setup. Sadly with me painting on an old plastic patio table in the basement, my options for mounting would be severely limitied. I think for the time being my best option will be a pair of lamps to keep costs down, and once I can get a proper painting table built, I'll be looking at an arched setup.

Thanks!

For my desk I use a combination of a striplight an adjustable led task amp.and a little ikea spot lamp.



For my portable painting tray thingy I found a really neat split led strip lamp that let's you position the lights around where your hands go.and give multiple.light sources.

 Flinty wrote:
For my desk I use a combination of a striplight an adjustable led task amp.and a little ikea spot lamp.

I use the exact same lamp setup - its great. The same bar LED + the ikea snake LEDs

I have two desk lamps posted on each side of my paining area. Both have the LED bulbs, so throw off a fair amount of light, so it works for me. But, alas, one of them had the switch break, so I just turn the bulb to go on and off (safety hazard!!) and am looking to replace fairly soon.

Deleted.

One aspect that I sorely miss is when I went to LED and you do not get the heat from the bulb, is I can no longer hold a resin mini up to the bulb for a while to heat it up and reshape/bend it.

If I start to have some resin minis to fix I will probably put an incandescent bulb back into one of the lamps.