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My eyesight has greatly diminished from my prime due to some accidental injuries, to the extent that I find miniature painting to be extremely stressful nowadays. I used to be able to comfortably paint in epic 40k scale, and now even painting eyes and edge highlights has become a constant source of frustration. At times it gets so bad that I've even thought about giving up painting altogether..

I've tried analyzing my painting process and what seems to be lacking, and have identified two key areas:
• Greatly reduced depth perception
• Not being able to see into the details, especially around the area I'm pointing at with the brush

I've tried getting better lights and even have a magnifying desk lamp, but it's not improving matters enough. The magnifying lamp makes detail bigger, but has an awkward viewing angle/distance and practically eliminates my depth perception completely. And even though I have two LED lamps, even when combined they don't seem to give enough brightness to properly see what I'm doing..

So I keep coming back to the issue of work space brightness and remember reading about surgery operating rooms using insane lighting power, which suggests delicate work is helped by superb brightness levels in working area. So in order to try to make painting enjoyable again, I want to splurge out on a totally overkill lighting solution. After some googling, I found this lamp called Lumiy Lightbade 1500S, which is supposedly among the brightest desk lamps available out there (amazon claims the mk II model outputs 1500 Lux).

Was just wondering if anyone here has experience using this lamp. Worth it?

If you have any other lighting recommendations, I'd appreciate hearing about them. I need as bright a light as possible.

TIA

I am sorry to hear about your sight.

I got some decent lights for $50 each, but I got 2, thinking that light wont be bright enough from a single lamp.
And yep, it was not, with both it is ok, BUT, too much bright LED lights cant be good for your eyes.

Quick google tells the light you are looking at is around $100?
We had a thread few months ago about some lights, and what I remember is that 100 is not enough for a good light.
Let me find it, one sec


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here it is.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789075.page
https://www.heamar.co.uk/search?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=D35600&submit_search=


And I hope you will find a way for you to enjoy the hobby once again. Have you tried taking a stab at some terrain? I find it most relaxing, even with ok-ish eye sight.

maybe somer thing like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Magnifying-Adjustable-Eye-Caring-Magnifier-Illuminated/dp/B08977DLDK/ref=sr_1_24?dchild=1&keywords=Magnifiers+for+Craft+Work&qid=1597581361&quartzVehicle=4015-1880&replacementKeywords=magnifiers+for+craft&sr=8-24

 Mothsniper wrote:
I am sorry to hear about your sight.

I got some decent lights for $50 each, but I got 2, thinking that light wont be bright enough from a single lamp.
And yep, it was not, with both it is ok, BUT, too much bright LED lights cant be good for your eyes.

Quick google tells the light you are looking at is around $100?
We had a thread few months ago about some lights, and what I remember is that 100 is not enough for a good light.
Let me find it, one sec


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here it is.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789075.page
https://www.heamar.co.uk/search?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=D35600&submit_search=


And I hope you will find a way for you to enjoy the hobby once again. Have you tried taking a stab at some terrain? I find it most relaxing, even with ok-ish eye sight.

Oh, big thanks for the links! I'll check all this stuff out, great.
I was tinkering with the lights again today, and actually realized the direction of the lamp is much more crucial to painting than I previously realized (duh!). I managed to improve my painting light condition considerably just by positioning the light so that it points as much to the direction I'm painting into, as opposed to just having the light above the model. But I am sure that things could be improved even further by investing into a better lighting system.

Another nice surpise was testing out AK weathering pencils I impulse bought this spring. While not exactly a substitute for proper multilayer edge highlight, the control of a pencil compared to a brush is superb and allows me to dial in at least a passable semblance of an edge highlight. They also work quite nicely as a drybrushing alternative for working on small areas like armour joints etc, and work especially well for base texture higlighting.

And yes, Terrain is wonderful to work on, but I got so much on my backlog/pile of shame that I have to tackle some of my new models as well. I think I can still reach a passable "tabletop" quality, so its also a matter of adjusting my expectations.. Not going to be winning golden demons suffering from retinopathy etc, and coolminiornot 9/10 tier was always beyond my reach anyways!

EDIT: 3800 lux eh? That's more than double what the 1500S outputs. I think we might have a winner.. Just have to make sure the dimensions aren't too big for my workspace. Great stuff!

Oh yeah, the direction!
that is another reason I got 2 lamps for me, from both directions.

And speaking of directions, you mentioned you tried magnifying lenses, have you tried the jewelers " goggles" with built in directional light source?
I have no t tried them me self. but if jewelers use em, should be good for us too. speaking of,, sorry off topic, this guy is awesome.

I actually just bought a set of jeweller's glasses (swappable lenses for up to 25x zoom) with LED lights, cost something like 10€.. Not having high hopes for them but we'll see once they ship. I am worried that they too might totally eliminate my depth perception.

Cheers