I’m a big fan of natural lighting of a layout whenever possible. Down in the deep south here, no one has windowless basements, so every layout space is almost certain to have some windows. At this location in particular, the sun lighting seen is at 9 am and is good for 10 minutes or less but long enough for a couple of photos. The Venetian blinds there are currently broken and can’t be raised to avoid the slat shadows, but replacement is scheduled. The rest of the time, indirect natural lighting is still better than artificial lighting, in my opinion. Natural light is great at showing up modeling flaws , as well as needed deep dusting requirements on models that can’t be seen in artificial light.
Natural light looks so... well... natural! Unfortunately, wherever sunlight hits the layout, the scenery colors and paint on any static models therein will fade with time. Just the nature of the UV content of sunlight. Andre
Patrick, one problem in the layout space is that outdoor light coming through a window does not get scattered like the light that is outdoors. If you could take the scene from the layout and photograph it indoors and out, you would see immediately what I mean. That is why layout photographers have multiple (up to ten) sources of light to even out the lighting to make it look like sunlight outdoors.
Diffuse indirect natural light works well on 1/2 my layout (the 1/2 in the room with 3 well spaced windows.) The Western Division is in another room with only one window. Track lights in there. The second photograph is in there, at the 6:30 - 6:33 am moment when direct sunlight hits Thunder Grove.
It's a neat photo, a little orange and yellow might look like morning or evening. Just as light it changes too often for me.
The Kodak moments like the ones I posted only last a minute or two as the sun (apparently) travels in the sky. I have multiple track lights on the layout most of the time - 5 fixtures in one room and 7 in the other. When there is good natural light, mostly in the morning, the track lights do good fill in work.
