I have a new YouTube video reviewing the new light I’ve got for my painting set up. If you haven’t watch it, here’s the video and the summary if you want to read about it.
It's been a month since I moved to a new home and a new studio space. I got things pretty much all set up for painting and video. As the matter of fact, I am already starting to do some commission works. I have some nice LED lights hanging on the ceiling. At first, I thought it will be enough, but after I set up everything I realized this is not sufficient for what I want to do.
I have a GoPro mounted on top of my painting for video recording and live stream. What happens is it is casting a shadow on the painting and it's really bugging me. In order for me to solve that problem, I need a light under the GoPro to eliminate that shadow. In my previous studio, I did have a clamp light onto the side, but it is heavy, bulky and actually it's a little bit broken so I got rid of it. When it comes to lighting, I consider three things when I select a light:
Brightness - The purpose of having additional lighting is to make sure things are well lit, so if the light is not bright enough, that defeats the purpose.
Temperature - Not physically how hot it is, although I don't like traditional tungsten lighting for that very reason because they become really hot, I'm talking about a color that it emits. I always paint under 5,000K-6,500K light because it is a nice neutral white daylight. The color appears to be most neutral under that light. Painting under a light that is too warm or too cool will throw your judgment of colors off.
Light shape - The light needs to have good coverage of the image. If it is a hard spotlight, it will have a bright spot that is extra bright while the rest of the paintings are dark.
With these three criteria in mind, I found my new lighting.
PHIVE LED Desk lamp
31.5 inch wide
20W brightness
CRI85Ra
5 brightness levels
4 color modes - 3,000k, 4,000k, 5,000k, 6,500k
This LED lamp has 4 modes of light: 3,000K, 4,000K, 5,000K, and 6,500K. 5,000K and 6,500k are both very nice daylight colors with 5,000k a little bit warmer. It is also very long, so it gives a nice flat pool of light, nice floodlight. The light has a flexible neck, which is flexible but also very stable. The clamp here is really sturdy, this screw type clamp as opposed to spring, and you can actually change how wide you need it to open, and the AC adapters, some hardware, and the first thing I noticed that it is a lot bigger than what I expected.
So one thing that I really appreciate, it has is the memory function. So when you turn it off and turn it on again, it remembers the brightness and the color settings you had. that I turned off with. It may not seem much, but it will be a pain if every single time I turn on the light, I will have to change the color and the brightness, so I really appreciate that they added that feature.