thanks luminiferous!
Living somewhat in the suburbs, power outages are common. As a college student who needs to cram in the wee hours of the morning, this can be a big deal. We had an ice storm a few weeks ago, lost power for about 6 hours, and I needed to study all night. Thankfully someone has a bunch of flashlights.
Although the flashlight collection was a saviour, the glare from the emitters while trying to read a textbook is really hard on the eyes. I wanted some sort of compact lantern I could set on my desk to study by; did some searching, and obviously found the Coleman which is -almost- perfect. It really is well made, but again the glare from the emitter off the smooth reflectors feels like it's melting a hole in my brain.
Someone here mentioned painting the conical reflector white which is a good idea; although the reflective silver would transmit more light if I could find a way to disperse the light better.
I used to work for an art materials company, and we sold supplies for professional sign painters. Some would use Scotchlite reflective glass beads for lettering, which are microscopic, clear glass beads that catches light from all angles and has terrific reflectivity/visibility. It's the same material used on highway signs and on running shoes. Great stuff (but insanely expensive). You can get generic at some art/craft shops, industrial supply companies, or Ebay (just google for "reflective glass beads). The non-3M brands are 98% as good and a heck of a lot cheaper.
I took one of my lamps apart (and broke it somewhat in my haste), but I decided to sacrifice one, and not worry about neatness just to find out if this crazy idea had any merit. I used 5-min epoxy and brushed it on like a paint, then poured the beads on top.
It's deceiving in the picture, but the beads are perfectly clear, that yellowish/browish color is something my camera did:
You can see with/without beads here:
Stock on left, reflective beads on right:
It doesn't get rid of the artifacts, but it's perfectly comfortable to look at; much easier on the eyes!
Again, stock on left, beads on right:
It's actually quite a success, and easy to do; although taking the dome apart is tough (like lumeniferous pointed out). If I did it again, I'd take my time so as to not crack the case or scratch up the dome, and I'd use a slower setting epoxy (like the 2-ton at Walmart) to have more time to paint a nicer/thin layer on the chrome before applying the beads.
Hint... if you do something like this, put some bits of tape on the top/bottom of the lantern to mark the orientation; so you don't get your polarity wrong when you put it back together like I did:
"Why won't my light turn on? What's that burning smell? Uh oh..."
