Lighting and Magifying solutions?

[Roger Bunting]

Whilst at the moment the longer daylight hours help let me do some work in the early evening (as long as I\'m not too tired) I\'m thinking of getting a decent lamp or lamps. Currently I have an angle poise lamp with a 60w daylight simulation bulb (those blue-coated things). That has been fine when I\'ve done 2d work but I find it doesn\'t do quite as good a job for painting minis. So, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Also, I use a Third Hand magnifier (a magnifying glass-something like 2 or 2.25x mag. I think and two bulldog clips for holding stuff). However, it has it\'s limitations, such as it\'s pretty short so I find myself craning my neck a bit too much and the lens is 60mm and I think something bigger would be better, especially for the amount of time I\'ve been using it.

Now, I\'ll be sorting out a lighting setup for photograps, too, so if anyone has suggestions for that (possibly the same lamp used for painting?), that would be marvellous.

 

[Wren]

I use a lamp with a daylight spectrum bulb. These put out much less heat than regular bulbs, which is nice as I have the lamp almost right against my head. On the few occasions I\'ve used regular lamps I\'ve noticed the paint drying out much faster. I can\'t seem to find a picture of the exact one I have. I started with this one, but the magnifier got in the way of the brush so I just removed that and used the lamp. Eventually I wore out one of the positioning elements at the neck and had to buy a new one. (The lamp part itself still works great after four years, I just needed to be gentler positioning it I think.) With the new one I got a clip on the second arm instead of the magnifier. This is very handy for holding reference pictures or articles at eye level and away from paint spills while I work. It also has a little tray at the bottom for holding stuff, but this isn\'t essential. As far as just light goes, Ott makes lots of lamps of this kind also.

I use the same lamp to photograph with. I also have a small Ott travel lamp that lights the mini from overhead, then I position the long bulb of the Daylight lamp to the front and slightly left of the mini, and that eliminates most shadows. As they\'re both natural spectrum lamps I set my camera\'s white balance to the sunshine setting.

For magnification I use an Optivisor. I\'ve seen similar products by different names in craft and hobby stores. I\'ve seen versions with lights attached but I haven\'t seen any mini painters really recommending those. You can also buy an additional loupe for one eye to get really close-up, but I haven\'t tried that. They make plates with different levels of magnification.

Now that I\'m a bit older there\'s one problem I\'ve noticed with it. With the Optivisor you look slightly up to magnify and you look down under it to look at your palette and whatnot normal size. Which sounds good. But now that I have bifocals, they work on the opposite principle where you\'re supposed to look down to magnify things. That is how the MagEyes magnifier works. I\'ve gotten one of these now but I\'m so used to using the other that I\'m having trouble adjusting.

One thing I\'ve noticed about these is you can get over-focused (ha, hah) on the close-up view, and it\'s good to remember to pull the mini away and look at it from a bit of a distance with regular vision to make sure you\'re painting with enough impact to view on the shelf/table/etc. Likewise it\'s good to take the mini into dimmer lighting and check your contrast still looks like what you need away from the bright lights.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Ok Roger IIRC you\'ve got spectacles so start thinking along these lines:
1
or
2
Or if you don\'t mind buying from America
3
or
4

The last are very simlar to the set I use.

Also Hobbycraft (if there\'s one in your area) do the range of Daylight Lamps and bulbs. But be warned Hobbycraft are almost as bad a \"Money Vampire\" as GW.

 

[Roger Bunting]

Thanks for the info there Wren and Mike. A few options to poder over.

Yeah, the third hand or helping hand thing I have sometimes gets in the way of the light as well, so in combination they didn\'t work so well. I didn\'t have that issue when doing illustrations as I didn\'t need a magnifier, and I painted a lot more thickly so the heat wasn\'t so much of an issue.

 

[Roger Bunting]

Okay, I\'ve had a look around. The mageyes don\'t seem to be readily available in the UK, so I think those are out for now. The optivisor is probably a bit expensive if I don\'t like them so I\'ll probably try some clip on lenses at first.

I think just a standard OTT task lamp (freestanding or clip on) should be about right for me.

 

[skeeve]

Armorcast, which is currently has a link on front page sells a head-band binocular magnifier with build in light source. It also has several insertable lenses that you can slide in and out to adjust magnification.

The whole thing goes for whole 11$. I use that one.