The Loose Association of Wargamers

Morning all just thought I'd ask for advice
Does anybody have recommendations for lighting
My Games room lighting isn't bright enough I think for taking good pictures.
What I currently do with new stuff is have to take it outside on a cloudy day (not that often here - its usually sunny), set up some terrain and snap away. I'm fed up of doing this
Ideally what I'd like to do is to be able to take pictures on the gaming table in my games room as they are -I have a lightbox but again that's not what I'm after

Any bright ideas for temporary lighting?
I see umbrella like stuff advertised at a reasonable rate and light panels etc but I'm still confusedified

What sort of lighting do you suggest? What about different bulbs that give off different light
I've tried to read a few tips on the net but remain confused
So let the punfest begin!

De-lighted to be able to help.
You can go the professional route with umbrella flashes synchronised to your camera. If you want to keep it lo-tech the best solution is to bounce the available light around with white or reflective boards and add extra light using something like an LED work light. I'll bung up a pic of my one shortly.

I don't think that temperature balanced daylight bulbs are worth the bother just for photographic use, any half decent software will let you balance it however you like. Purists please note: I'm talking about photos, not figure painting, if you're painting in a windowless dungeon or Scotland in winter you need all the help you can get.

Just get as many lamps with high wattage incandescent bulbs (halogen also works) and place them close to the target. Use a tripod to enable long exposure. It's that simple.

My work light


Some WIP Space Marines using phone camera flash only


Direct LED light


Diffused LED light using translucent paper


Could have played around a bit more using shiny card etc but you get the picture.

Oh Yeah, Tip number 1, clean the lens first.

Thanks Gents
Yes Buff, definitely low tech is the approach I would like to take

Surely Tip #1 is "remove the lens cap"?

Nah, makes the image harder to compress.

VB - do you have any old x-ray light boxes unused at the practice? They make good light boxes funnily enough!

I'm getting the iPhone 11 Pro soon. Supposedly it's got all kinds of "epic" compensatory stuff going on in the yet again improved cameras and software. I'll be interested to see what it offers my photography, as the step up from the 6 to the 10 was pretty spectacular, in terms of the quality of the unmodified photos with simple paint desk lighting.