Check out âBarry Lyndonâ, a film whose period interiors were famously shot by period lamp-and-candle lighting (director Stanley Kubrick had to source special lenses with which to do it).
More recently, some scenes in âWolf Hallâ were also shot with period live-flame lighting and IIRC until they got used to it, actors had to be careful how they moved across the sets. However, itâs very atmospheric: thereâs one scene where Cromwell is sitting by the fire, brooding about his association with Henry VIII while the candles in the room are put out around him. The effect is more than just visual.
As someone (I think it was Terry Pratchett) once said: âYou always need enough light to see how dark it is.â
A demonstration of getting that out of balance happened in later seasons of âGame of Thronesâ, most infamously in the complaint-heavy âBattle of Winterfellâ episode, whose cinematographer claimed the poor visibility was because âa lot of people donât know how to tune their TVs properlyâ.
So it was nothing to do with him at all, oh dear me no. Wottapillock. Needing to retune a TV to watch one programme but not others shows where the fault lies, and itâs not in the TV.
We live in rural West Wicklow, Ireland, and itâs 80% certain that when we have a storm, a branch or even an entire tree will fall onto a power line and our lights will go out.
Usually the engineers have things fixed in an hour or two, but that can be a long dark time in the evenings or nights of October through February, so we always know where the candles and matches are and the oil lamp is always full.
We also know from experience how much reading can be done by candle-light, and itâs more than youâd think, once thereâs a candle right behind you with its light falling on the pages.
You get more light than youâd expect from both candles and lamps, because for one thing, eyes adapt to dim light. @dduaneâ says she can sometimes hear my irises dilating. Yeah, sureâŚ
For another thing lamps can have accessories. Hereâs an example: reflectors to direct light out from the wall into the room. Iâve tried this with a shiny foil pie-dish behind our own Very Modern Swedish Design oil lamp, and it works.
Smooth or parabolic reflectors concentrate their light (for a given value of concentrate, which is a pretty low value at that) while flatter fluted ones like these scatter the light over a wider area, though itâs less bright as a result:
This candle-holder has both a reflector and a magnifying lens, almost certainly to illuminate close or even medical work of some sort rather than light a room.
And then thereâs this, which a lot of people saw and didnât recognise, because itâs often described in tones of librarian horror as a beverage in the rare documents collection.
There IS a beverage, thatâs in the beaker, but the spherical bottle is a light magnifier, and Gandalf would arrange a candle behind it for close study.
Hereâs one being used - with a lightbulb - by a woodblock carver.
And hereâs the effect it produces.
Hereâs a four-sphere version used with a candle (all the fittings can be screwed up and down to get the candle and magnifiers properly lined up) and another one in use by a lacemaker.
Finally, hereâs something I tried last night in our own kitchen, using a water-filled decanter. Itâs not perfectly spherical so didnât create the full effect, but it certainly impressed me, especially since Iâd locked the camera so its automatic settings didnât change to match light levels.
This is the effect with candles placed ânormallyâ.
But when one candle is behind the sphere, this happens.
 It also threw a long teardrop of concentrated light across the worktop; the photos of the woodcarver show that much better.
Poor-people lighting involved things like rushlights or tallow dips. They were awkward things, because they didnât last long, needed constant adjustment, didnât give much light and were smelly. But they were cheap, and thatâs what mattered most.
Theyâre often mentioned in historical and fantasy fiction but seldom explained: a rushlight is a length of spongy pith from inside a rush plant, dried then dipped in tallow (or lard, or mutton-fat), hence both its names.
Hereâs Jason Kingsley making one.
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