Light, Camera, Awesome

In completing my units I am slowly learning that photographing my minis and working with better lighting is a must.  Like some of us in the hobby, I search for the super bright and "natural" bright and clear natural light for painting and photography.  After digging around and trying different types of lights, I believe I found my favorite setup for lighting, and it won't break the bank.







I was lucky to get a desk OttLite Desk Lampfor christmas last year, but with a 79.00 price tag it's definitely nice.  Linkage here.  However, I use two lights and find the need to upgrade my standard Swing arm lamp.  You know the kind, I bet you got at least 2 yourself:

You can find these everywhere, Wal-Mart, Target, Ikea, even some supermarkets.

Now I have always been a fan of the GE Reveal 100 Watt Incandescent bulbs, but man, they get hot, and when it's right at your brow while you're painting, making you schvitz like a roasting pig , all the while drying up your paints, it's eh...not so good.

So I tried various CFL bulbs, but they just had the wrong color temperature.  So lo and behold...(as I'm sure is not new to you guys, but is new to me ...so I blog about it...)  In comes the Awesome OTT LITE CFL 15 Watt Bulb!

My freaking hero!

And yes, even if it was 20 bucks, it would still be worth it.  Luckily they just opened a Hobby Lobby in town and I had a super coupon so I got mine for like 8.  It is quite on par with my 80 dollar tube fixture and slapping it into a regular 10 dollar Arm Lamp, makes a great thing even better.

So even though I don't get paid by OttLite, I would totally suggest you invest a little bit more into your lighting setup.  Most of the hardcore painters out there tend to use the Ott Lite Task Lite x 2, but for me the CFL bulb is the way to go.

Here are my Blindingly awesome work lights:

You'll  see the nice fancy lamp on the right, but the CFL on the left.  Even with my phone camera you can see that they have very  similar color ranges.

My next post later this weekend will hopefully show off my second completed Assault Marine Squad and allow me to take another crack at photographing them minus the suck.

Thanks for reading!