I’ve written many reviews in my time at GeekDad, and I’ve looked at Redgrass games products before. I like them. In particular, the painting handles. When writing reviews I’m often prone to hyperbole when describing stuff. If it’s a product you like you want to stress its good points and help set it apart from the rest of the field. Well, prepare for me to go into hyper-hyperbole mode for this new painting lamp from Redgrass games. It’s an absolute game-changer and has revolutionized my painting life.
UPDATE: 3/28/2023 – The Redgrass R9 Desklamp has won a Red Dot design award. With around 20,000 entries per year, the Red Dot Design Award is one of the biggest design competitions in the world.
If you want to check out the Kickstarter, you can do so, here. (Kickstarter opens on March 30th.)
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
What is the Redgrass R9 Desklamp?
It’s a desk lamp designed by painters for painters. It clamps easily to a desk and after a little bit of fiddling to work out how best to manipulate it, it’s a versatile, easily moveable, lamp, that enables you to continue painting long after daylight has faded. Of course, it is not only useful for miniature painting, if you participate in any hobby that needs a strong source of consistent light, then this is a top-quality lamp to provide just that.
I’m very fortunate to be able to paint in a room with a lot of natural light. This is great in the summer, but in the winter, my painting hours are drastically reduced. I don’t like to paint under unnatural light and then switch to natural light, as I find the shades of the paint, when highlighting and adding texture, come out differently from what I was expecting, ruining the overall finish.
That, and as I’ve got older, light-bulb light just isn’t strong enough for me to be able to see the details of the miniature correctly. Part of this problem, I must confess, was solved by getting some reading glasses, but nevertheless, I still couldn’t paint after the daylight has dropped. Until now.
Having tried a number of different lamps, I didn’t hold out much hope that this lamp would solve my problem. Even when I have been able to find a lamp with a light I liked, I still found that it threw up too many shadows for me to paint properly. Until now.
The Redgrass Lamp R9 lamp has enabled me to extend the hours in which I can paint by not only maintaining a light that is very much the color of daylight but offering a glow that is diffuse enough not to give my miniatures deep shadowy recesses.
In short, I love the Redgrass Painting Lamp. It’s changed my life, in a small but profound way. During the pandemic, painting became an escape; a grounding. Something mindful. Life is back to being full-on again, and sometimes, this winter, there weren’t enough daylight hours in a day for me to find time to paint. Until I had my lamp. Now I can have some all-important calming relaxation, painting my miniatures, no matter what the time of day.
All in all, the Redgrass lamp is amazing, and if you have the money I would thoroughly recommend it. Therein lies the catch. At a backing price of $200, this is a premium product. I think it does justify this price tag, but, full disclosure, if I hadn’t been fortunate to be sent a lamp to review, I probably would have made do with my existing setup.
Had I done this, however, I would have missed out. The improvement in quality over previous lamps I’ve used more than justifies the increased cost. Sometimes you absolutely do get what you pay for. It’s definitely worth the investment. It all comes down to whether you have spare money to invest. Spare money can be in short supply these days.
Let’s have a look at the features that make the Redgrass Lamp such an exceptional product.
Why Invest in a Redgrass R9 Desklamp?
You can check out all this information, in greater depth, here on the Redgrass website.
From the moment you receive the box, you know that this is a quality product. There’s not an inch of wasted space or packaging in the box. Minimal but safe packaging. A perfect start.
The light assembles very easily and has a nice industrial matte black finish. It is quite big, allowing it good reach and coverage but perhaps something to consider if you have a small painting space.
The lighting arms rotate, so that you can tilt the light direction to suit your needs.
The light is fully controllable from 10% up to 100% brightness.
The Redgrass Lamp, uses its own “Colour Perfect” technology, to go above and beyond what more traditional lamps deliver. This uses custom-made optical lenses and high-end LEDs. Standard color rendering analyzes only 8 colors out of 15 and excludes key colors such as red, yellow, and skin tones. I must confess that I don’t understand the science of it, but usual lamps, particularly don’t render red. The Redgrass advanced LED’s has a score of 97+ on the Rg test, covering all 15 colors.
This part of Redgrass’ promotional material particularly caught my eye:
“Powered by premium electronics, our custom-made LEDs rely on the right combination between specific phosphor coatings and purple LED technology. They reproduce the spectrum of natural daylight, while limiting blue light wavelength peaks.“
Again, I can’t pretend to understand or corroborate the technical details of this statement, but I can 100% agree with its effects. I have often found myself painting in the afternoons, as the daylight fades away. Switching the lamp on has been a seamless transition from natural daylight to light provided by the lamp, without suddenly altering the appearance of my colors. Additionally, there is none of the harshness of the blueness that comes with some lamps. The Redgrass R9 lamp is easy on the eye in many different ways.
If you’re interested, the full technical specs are as follows:
- Powered by Redgrass R9 Color Perfect TM
- Light source: 96 Dimmable custom-made LEDs
- Optical lens: 60°
- Color temperature: Pure-White daylight 5000K
- Max output: 1800 lumens
- Illuminance: 3700 lux at 45cm
- Extended CRI R1-R15: 98.5+
- R9 @ 98
- TM30-20: Rf=97 Rg=101
- Shadowless – No glare technology
- Flicker-free – EMC safe
A Lamp Worth Backing.
As I have already mentioned, I’ve been extremely impressed by this lamp. I had always thought that painting under artificial light would be a case of managing with “good enough.” The Redgrass R9 has massively exceeded my expectations. The $200 price is quite expensive for a piece of hobby equipment, but we tabletop gamers are used to costly purchases. Do yourself a favor, go without new miniatures this month, back this lamp on Kickstarter, then when it arrives, use it to maximize those hours working through that grey pile of shame!
Disclosure: I received a lamp in order to write this review.
