Restaurant Light (03280023/03280035/03280003)
January 3rd, 2007
Most restaurants have terrible light. Angular and insufficient seems to be high concept for restaurant lighting design. It’s not a look that flatters food or people, and it sucks for most photography.
Sometimes, like in the case of above, you can use the angularity to produce a kind of edge effect. But in the end, it’s just not enough light in all the wrong places. Take the girl in the background for example. Why is her shirt so comparitively brilliantly lit? A little over head cone light that throws more like a spot illuminates her back, but why should a restaurant want to back light things. Or to put in another way, why should another customer’s back be the only well lit object to pass under a customer’s gaze. Are we here to eat or to be voyeurs? I’m here to eat and to talk to the people whom I came with. Put a nice diffuse light source right over the table. Like a china ball. Not something like this:
You never see china balls in restaurants though. Do the restaurant lighting designers of the world hold an idealogical grudge against difusion? Or is it a matter of collusion with the chefs; the silly customers won’t know the food is bad if we just back light it. And don’t get me started on compact flourescents. Angularity, low intensity and spectral castration? No thanks, I’ll eat at home under the nice soft light of my china balls.
January 3rd, 2007
Hi Matt,
I’m sorry to hear about your lost hexar RF eypiece part. I am wondering if you have a -1 or -1.5 or even -2 diopter for the RF for sale? Thanks.
Ted
January 4th, 2007
Ted, I sent the diopters back to KEH after I realized that they wouldn’t work for my purposes, so you might check there. There was also a place in New Jersey called something like The Photo Shop that had Hexar diopters on their website. You might do a google search for it.
January 9th, 2007
Matt,
As I get older, restaraunt lighting annoys me more and more. There have been times when it was so dim (admittedly my eyesight is getting worse by the day) that I literally could not read the menu. But what I really wanted to comment on is the lighting in your photos. It looks to me what we call “ceiling acne”, high hats that the designers and builders had to place somewhere before the drywall got screwed to the ceiling and covered the cans, but who could say where the tables were really going to be placed once the tenant moved in? As a builder, I find we often move lights around for customers after drywall has been installed, because thoughts about fixtures often change between the time of the framing and the time when the fixtures are hung and used. And going to a hanging fixture doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, because they still have to be hung on a metal box that is recessed in the ceiling, so they are fixed in place once the fixtures are hung. No doubt good lighting designers know how close to place ceiling fixtures in restaraunts, but who’s to say that the tenant won’t squeeze in a couple more tables and throw the alignment off? All we can do, really, is choose not to spend our money at places that have done a bad job of looking out for our interests as aesthetic beings who need light to see, but also like it placed in complimentary locations.
January 10th, 2007
Hey Kent,
Thanks for the builders perspective on this. Parallel to what you are saying, I’ve noticed that places with booths often have the best lighting. I guess because the booths are more fixed than free standing tables, the tenant is likely to throw off the lighting placement with their own modifications.
What’s odd about this, one of the worst offenders for bad lighting design, is the little Italian place down the road that uses these Ikea lights that are strung along two wires running parallel to the ceiling, much like a sort of suspended track lighting. Here’s a case where they can modify the lighting in a least one dimension, but they’ve still chosen to leave the lights in places where they do the diner very little good.
I suspect that more than anything, it’s just not an issue that most restraunteurs pay much attention to, regardless of how much they talk about ambience in their media.
January 10th, 2007
Matt,
I agree, lighting in a pizza joint is not exactly a top priority. In most places it isn’t, in fact. This is an interesting topic though. I’m going to be more conscious of the problem. Generally I have no interest in photography in restaraunts. People - well, my wife anyway - don’t really want their picture taken when they’re eating. It often smacks too much of kids snapping their friends at a birthday party.
Anyway, the Ikea low voltage lights barely put out anything, even when they’re in the right place. When all is said and done, the best dining illumination is a candle on the table: either frontal or side light, but not some oblique overhead light that makes us look more ghoulish than we already are.