Can I make my lighting more even

PariahZero

PariahZero

Member
I have a three lamp table light. I’m overall happy with it, but am looking for advice for how to make the light more diffused/even.

As-is, I have frosted LED bulbs, and the it lights up the table like this:

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As you can see, there are definite “spotlight” circles.

I’m wondering if there’s a way I could get the light to appear more even, by using something like the following:

  • Different bulbs
    • Unfrosted Bulbs
    • Floodlight Bulbs
    • Other bulb styles
  • Painting the inside of the lamp shades with a matte white paint (to maybe diffuse the light more)
  • Maybe put in some kind of diffuser at the bottom of the lampshade (what is available?)
  • Maybe raise the lamp more

Does anybody with more experience with lighting/photography have suggestions on how I can improve the current lighting?

I’d rather not buy new(er) lighting.
 
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Flooded bulbs would help. Have you ever had different color cloth? I think the “spots” you are seeing are going to be so much more pronounced on dark cloth.
 
Black cloth was a bad idea from the get go ... light grey is about the best for clarity followed by tournament blue, gold and traditional green. Diamond ONLY recommends tube lights .. LED tubes from Keystone .. that provide outstanding luminosity with no shadowing. They sell light boxes for 48" tubes. I built a light box and installed a fixture that takes 4 * 48" LED tubes .. and the luminosity is outstanding. Waiting to receive my 8' table and get it installed. We built an addition with a 20 * 18' room for a pool table .. still a construction site .. but just hung the light box and ran temporary power to it to test it. The box with 4 LED tubes is perfect .. you can build a box from 1*6 pine boards and install a flush mount fixture for direct drive led tubes .. fixture with 4 tubes provides over 7000 lumens .. fixture comes with a diffuser and the fixture cost is around $60 and another $60 for the four tubes. I built my box from 1*6" pine, stained cherry to match my table, and built an escutcheon box that is mounted to the ceiling to hang the light box from. Used SS 1/8" anchor chain (still need to trim it .. we just tested the light and it gives total coverage over the area that the table will cover (8' table).
 

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FWIW, the cloth isn’t black; it’s Navy blue. It is the first table I’ve owned, and my wife preferred the color.

Not knowing any better, I agreed. Were I do it all over again, I’d have advocated more strongly for a tournament blue.

I’m pretty choosy about my lights: dimmable and not flickering is mandatory.

For me, seeing the bulb/tube is bad (it triggers migraines) Using bulbs instead of tubes reduces the pain quite a bit, as it’s three small points of light instead of long lines. (Yes... driving at night isn’t fun for me... don’t get me started on the Daystar.)

I’ve got ideas about an exotic light to solve my problems... but that ain’t in the cards near term.
 
Without seeing the light fixture itself, it's hard to say.
When I was learning studio lighting for video production, we'd use filters, diffusers and shades to get the light just right.
Off the bat I'd say you just need a diffuser plus a way to spread the light further. With the bulbs you have you have @4' of zone light spreading to 7'.
It looks like your current bulbs are only spreading 2.5 feet at best and you will want them to spread 4 (to get to the edge of the rails).

To sum it up, with your current fixture, different bulbs, using two, not three (eliminate the center light). You want a spread of 4 feet on the bulbs. And then add a diffusion panel somehow.
 
Inferno said:
Without seeing the light fixture itself, it's hard to say.
When I was learning studio lighting for video production, we'd use filters, diffusers and shades to get the light just right.
Off the bat I'd say you just need a diffuser plus a way to spread the light further. With the bulbs you have you have @4' of zone light spreading to 7'.
It looks like your current bulbs are only spreading 2.5 feet at best and you will want them to spread 4 (to get to the edge of the rails).

To sum it up, with your current fixture, different bulbs, using two, not three (eliminate the center light). You want a spread of 4 feet on the bulbs. And then add a diffusion panel somehow.
Click to expand...

I linked to the Amazon page for the light fixture above; here it is again. The shades are slightly translucent blue polypropylene. The inside is glossy royal blue - which is why I asked about perhaps painting the inside white (or maybe silver) so they’re more reflective.

I know it doesn’t take much to make a diffuser: I’ve seen secondhand store white sheets used to help diffuse light. I’ve got some flame retardant white plastic film (vapor barrier for insulation) that can easily be stretched across the aperture of the lamp shades. It’s not a holographic diffuser, but it is cheap.

I know other lights could provide a better light, but I need to make do (more or less) with what I have for now. A new light or new cloth isn’t something I can do for the foreseeable future; that’s a hard constraint.
 
I'll post it here for you.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do with those without increasing glare.
I really hate to say that but I don't have anything else. Sorry.

713ZYMFU6DL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
 
PariahZero said:
FWIW, the cloth isn’t black; it’s Navy blue. It is the first table I’ve owned, and my wife preferred the color.

Not knowing any better, I agreed. Were I do it all over again, I’d have advocated more strongly for a tournament blue.

I’m pretty choosy about my lights: dimmable and not flickering is mandatory.

For me, seeing the bulb/tube is bad (it triggers migraines) Using bulbs instead of tubes reduces the pain quite a bit, as it’s three small points of light instead of long lines. (Yes... driving at night isn’t fun for me... don’t get me started on the Daystar.)

I’ve got ideas about an exotic light to solve my problems... but that ain’t in the cards near term.
Click to expand...
There are no tubes visible in my light box .. when I put the diffuser in. It wasn't in for the photo as we had just put the tubes in. Not an issue. The light distribution is very even and bright .. and you CAN get dimmers.
 
289FIA said:
There are no tubes visible in my light box .. when I put the diffuser in. It wasn't in for the photo as we had just put the tubes in. Not an issue. The light distribution is very even and bright .. and you CAN get dimmers.
Click to expand...

I wear a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses while at the office to block their diffused light boxes. Office-style fluorescent lights are precisely what I have to avoid if I don’t want to trigger a migraine.

I vastly prefer the minor issues I have to the literal pain your light box would inflict on me.

Which is why I was wondering if I could improve what I have - not replace it with what would be a torture device.

I appreciate the attention, but one size does not fit all.
 
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Fluorescent lights trigger headaches because they actually pulse. Many people are sensitive to the pulsing. LEDs can pulse also but in a different way. Their pulse also is determined by the quality of the LED drivers.
 
Inferno said:
Fluorescent lights trigger headaches because they actually pulse. Many people are sensitive to the pulsing. LEDs can pulse also but in a different way. Their pulse also is determined by the quality of the LED drivers.
Click to expand...

Ona pure Lux to Pain ratio, you’re right: flickering fluorescent lights are the worst.

I’m aware if you get the newer T5 tubes, the electronic ballast runs at a flicker free 20 kHz, rather the cringe inducing 60 Hz frequency of older lamps.

LED’s can improve on even that, and they have other advantages as well.

That said, the Sun doesn’t pulse. I do everything I can to shield my eyes from the cursed thing.

Photosensitivity isn’t something I recommend.

If I had the budget (which I don’t), I’d align and use a few layers of grid diffusors like this:

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Paint them with Vantablack or Musou black (ultra black paints so dark a shiny car looks like a hole - example YouTube Video - skip to 5:30 min), and they’d crudely collimate the light. I’d have the grid thick enough that unless I crawled onto the table and looked up, the light fixture would just look like a black hole.

The table would be lit evenly, but there’d be no visible light overhead.

Maybe after I install walls in my table’s room... and maybe a ceiling. Meanwhile, I can dream...
 
Musou black might leave a grid pattern on the table and zero diffusion. If you couldn't see the bulb then you'd not see the light. Incredible stuff.
 
Inferno said:
Musou black might leave a grid pattern on the table and zero diffusion. If you couldn't see the bulb then you'd not see the light. Incredible stuff.
Click to expand...

I suspect the 5-10 degree spread the grid would permit would address any grid appearance and there’s enough space for most of the light to pass through. Only the table would be lit, though. It’d be pretty dark around the table. Kind of like a film noir interrogation.

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It’d be fun finding out. Maybe in a few years...
 
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I would draw up a physics diagram but that would take too much time. LOL
Trust me, you wouldn't want to use the grid you showed, painter with black, or made of anything other than a translucent material.
That grid is to diffuse light through translucence while allowing the largest amount of light through transparence. It does a piss-poor job of spreading light to begin with and 2.5 feet from a surface would be absolutely horrendous.
 
Inferno said:
I would draw up a physics diagram but that would take too much time. LOL
Trust me, you wouldn't want to use the grid you showed, painter with black, or made of anything other than a translucent material.
That grid is to diffuse light through translucence while allowing the largest amount of light through transparence. It does a piss-poor job of spreading light to begin with and 2.5 feet from a surface would be absolutely horrendous.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that it couldn’t possibly diffuse the light like that. As-is the bottom of my current lights are more than 36” above the table - I could probably go another 5-6” higher. With a ceiling mounted fixture there’s quite a bit more space than that.

And you’ve also got a really good point: it would result in undiffused light and hard shadows.

It wouldn’t be the best lighting serious pool, but it would look pretty interesting. The top half of the balls would be lit, and the bottoms would be darkly shadowed (given the darkness of my cloth).
 
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get those things that screw into a lamp socket that allows you to use two bulbs. now you have six smaller watt bulbs to shed light and can use floods or whatever and whatever color you want
 
PariahZero....did you miss the Predator light post?
notice the difference in evenness of light...most lights have too much in the middle of the table.

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