Designing a lamp for modelmakers. I would appreciate your help

#21

Hi
I have a (now unavailable) Actualite, fabulous at the time with a special enhancing plastic light filter underneath within it. 11W LED in it. Just lasted around 10 years. It doesn’t glare back, and shows up all detail.
I’ve enhanced this with other types of LED, so overall the light is ‘rounded’, not too shadowy.
But the best is, as said before always to work in natural light (1pm is great light) from a window, apparently best if over one’s right shoulder. I managed to design it so, nothing like the sun to show up all your glitches!
However, an overhead large flat horizontal LED ‘plate’ would also be good.

Cheers
Andrew T

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#22

Oh no I live up by the Arctic circle the sun doesn’t even come up in the winter at 1pm! Haha

#23

But it’s great to be painting outside at midnight in June.

#24

I tie flies, and the standard light used is an OTT light. Extremely accurate colors with no glare. I bought two of them at Goodwill, but Hobby Lobby sells them too
gary

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#25

That flat LED lights for sale at Costco. Would say the light is 10" or 12" wide by 24" long. Down side is that it must be hard wired in, and was designed to be mounted onto something flat. Seems like they were $25, but might be $40. Anyway that’s a lot of light!

Getting ready to build a new fly tying bench that will also be used for modeling. I’ll probably suspend one of those LED lights over it. Yet I’ll still use the OTT lights when detail is important to me. I’ll be 7th Heaven with all that light! I also want a good (optically) magnifier. Won’t use it all the time, but there are times when nothing else will do. Right now I’m using a pair of magnifiers designed for jewleers, and they work well.

gary

#26

your the only person here colder than I am right now, but you get to see the Northern Lights all the time!!
How lucky!!
gary

#27

I would research the LEDs in smartphones and flashlights because most desk lamp LEDs are too dim to perform modeling.

You want a LED that isn’t really a bulb because all those LED bulbs take many bulbs to shine sufficient light on a surface whereas the smartphone or flashlight just has one large LED in the center that shines super-bright and doesn’t give off a lot of heat.

As such, I would prefer a LED table lamp as those clamp-on swingarm lamps often don’t adjust or stretch over right and are too high above the desk and head for detail work.

Therefore, look to see if you can build a table lamp with a flashlight or smartphone LED and perhaps a magnifier or a lens to spread the light evenly. And then see if you can get Daylight temperatures with the LED or a fancier LED that makes reading easy. If not, then you might want to explore LED bulbs that Dioramartin and Barnslayer’s lamps show, but you might need a lot of LED bulbs for the lamp and that has already been done and sold before.

#28

they sell a clamp system that will hold a couple LED flashlights. Tried them, and found them to be awkward.
gary