how to light stained glass

[kerry davies]

I think the guys have touched on the problems you face but maybe if I cut it down to my own non-specialist words you might be able to take some steps towards a compromise.

 

The venue is one problem in that any artificial lighting will be battling against God, the great Lighting Designer, and ambient natural light. Any means of siting the artwork out of direct sunlight will be a start.

 

In competing with natural light it inflates the scale of your artificial sources way beyond LED fixtures and as Rob says, you need bigger, hotter light fixtures. His Sun Tube idea is one that might work with a floodlight at the top replacing the ambient daylight???My link

 

Your research showed that wide angle reflector lamps can work while the fixtures you are using appear to be 40 degree beam angle ones with limited output concentrated in the beams. These will illuminate what they are pointed at, the floor of the piece, and not be diffuse enough for the purposes you intend. You need scattered light as in floodlights.

 

Pritch makes a good suggestion in video/photography type lighting; diffuse and very bright. I think you could try it by just placing one on the floor as an experiment. I would also suggest light from top and bottom of the piece as there will almost certainly be gradations along a 5m throw. Some form of reflector such as cooking foil on the floor and ceiling of the piece might also help.

 

The main thing is that you know it works with a smaller scale piece so experimenting along the same principles with intense, wide angled fixtures is just common sense. You may need to use dimmable lights due to the varying ambient conditions, you will need a lot less output at night.

 

It looks lovely and I wish you well, it deserves to work. Oh, and we don't mention the ancient and secret Welsh martial art of Llap-goch too much. It scares the sheep more than a tanker full of mint sauce! ;)

[Tomo]

Unfortunately it's not clear in this thread as to the effect you're looking for.

 

Two things, which I think have been said before but bear repeating:

 

First of all, forget the LED.

It doesn't sound like you need dimming so use a discharge lamp of some kind (eg CDM) - considerably more efficacious/"greener" (more light per watt), and much brighter.

As it worked in the smaller-scale model, I agree that the piece needs a much wider beam from the luminaire. There are a lot of very wide CDM fixtures.

 

Another possibility would be fluorescent tubes fitted vertically running top to bottom in the two front edges of the piece, behind the glass.

- This would give a more even backlight from top to bottom, so I'm not sure if that's what you want.

 

Secondly, artificial light simply cannot compete with the Sun.

Try to make the daylight work for you, instead of against you.

[Monique Verbruggen]

Thank you very much Blue room Forum for all your advices.

I do realize that it is a design mistake, but I was advised by Dutch lighting professionals that it was going to be succesfull......

Anyway the advices about the stronger flexfire lights I am going tot try.

But unfortunately the try-out session is postponed to next week wednesday. I'll let yoy know how this story is going to end....happy ending?