You said lighting so I guess you mean lamps and bulbs.
Super cheap (2 EUR):
- Connect BPW34 photodiode to a 3.5 mm headphone microphone jack and put it into a smartphone (at own risk), then use a free oscilloscope app to visualize the "sound" input that is actually the photodiode generating current. Never done that, requires some skills.
"Cheap" (~ 70 EUR):
- App HScope for Android
- USB On-the-go cable
- Hantech 6022 BE oscilloscope
- BPW34 photodiode setup from the oscilloscope thread with less resistance (10K or less)
The only difficult thing is to make the sensor sturdy enough so you can carry it without destroying it. Maybe with a lot of tape.
Expensive (300 EUR):
There's also this Radex Lupin device but reviews said it's not very accurate, the values are fluctuating and you can't see any waveforms. I don't have it.
If you want to see very tiny light flicker like 0.01%, then out of these there's no way around the photodiode setup and another oscilloscope with higher accuracy, e.g. the PicoScope 2204A, however there's no app for that so not portable.
You can go even higher in price but the other options I found are well over 1000 EUR.