Studio lighting is important in any studio or workspace, and the Lumi Task Lamp will enable you to see fine details and true colours while working. The large shade can be smoothly adjusted vertically, horizontally and laterally to any desired position. The dimmable light allows easy adjustment when less light is required. Here, Maggie Lawrence shares her thoughts on the Lumi Task Lamp.
Review of Lumi Task Lamp for Daylight Studio Lighting
By Maggie Lawrence
I’m an oil painter, working on small paintings on a desk, mostly at night, so as you might imagine, the lighting is critical. I’ve used my Lumi Task Lamp for a few years now and I’m not sure I could easily live without it.
I used to use a daylight spotlight lamp, which worked to a degree, but being a spotlight it caused shadows. Under my hands, under brushes, it was always quite distracting.
The Lumi Task Lamp has a G-clamp setup to attach to your table or desk, it comes with two flexible arms that don’t need to be locked in position, and a swivel head, so I am yet to find an angle it can’t do. Combine that with a 60 cm ish width of multiple evenly spread mini LED lights, and you get a great spread of light coming from different angles, which greatly reduces the shadows.
Of course, these are daylight LEDs so the light emitted is bluer/whiter than a traditional tungsten bulb, which is about as close as you can get to ‘daylight’ in the dark and is really important if, like me, you are dealing in colour.
The light has three brightness levels, but I only ever use the brightest. The electric cable is about 2.1 metres which is a reasonable length.
The lamp isn’t cheap at about £109, but I’ve certainly got my money’s worth and I would highly recommend the lamps for anyone working on a desk, table or desk.
For those who like to love the specifications, I pinched this off their website:
Light source: LED
Lumens: 1,320 lm
Lux at 30 cm: 3,800
Colour temperature: 6,000 K
CRI: 80+
Energy consumption: 15W
Colour: white
LED rated life (hours): 50,000
2 steps touch dimmer: 3,800 and 1,750 Lux
Maximum reach: 100 cm | 39 in
Height: 58.5 cm | 23 in
Width: 51 cm | 20 in
Depth: 70 cm | 27 in
Weight: 2 kg | 4.4 lb
Cable length: 2.1 m | 83 in
Further Reading
Daylight Studio Lighting for Accurate Colours in Painting and Drawing
Tips for Plein Air Painting in Winter
The Best Way to Transfer Images to Lino
Image Making With Screen Print, Linocut and Gold Leaf
Shop Daylight Lighting Lumi Task Lamp on jacksonsart.com
This is something that I have studied in
depth and I continually wonder how the myth
of 6000 degree daylight lighting took hold.
6000 is blue and you are, in effect, shining a
blue light on your work and distorting your
colour perception and, personally, it gives
me a headache if I work too long.
What is most important for colour rendering
is balanced full spectrum lighting.. the
tungsten bulbs were good at this but were
yellow biased. You also need to consider
under what lighting your work will be viewed
and I use full spectrum lighting at a
compromise temperature of 4500 degrees.
Possibly it all started with the
recommendation to have a north facing
studio.. but that was to avoid the problem of
shadows and uneven illumination.
Try photographing your work illuminated by
north light, a (full spectrum) sun with cloud
cover and your lamp and you will see exactly
what I mean.
To use this light for painting I would hope for a much better CRI –
colour rendering index. CRI sets a low bar because it was designed
for fluorescent lighting, so LEDs should be able to deliver at least
CRI 90. One of the larger European electronics companies has
GU10 spots with a CRI of 95. These fit the very common ceiling
bars that take 4 spots, which reduces shadow problems.