First Try at Light Painting

[Gdad]

We had the BEST time doing this tonight. My only issue is that I just had a little bitty p&s as a flash, so most of the time we could not get my daughter lit enough.

At one point a car drove by when we were doing it and the picture came out really cool b/c of the lights on the car!

It is so much fun- right? I hope you don't mind I just took 2 minutes and adjusted the levels on these. Could do a lot better with a full size image but here goes-

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Thank you Jeff! I'm afraid in my impatience to have it get dark, while we were practicing, I had it on f18 or something like that! Then I was so excited that they worked, I forgot to change it. EEK! What did you do to adjust them? Just brighten them? I'm using Capture NX2 for editing, but honestly, I need an editing class...just b/c you have the editing ability does not mean you know what to do to edit correctly!

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

We had a great time in the backyard last night playing with this. We learned a lot and realized that we still need some practice.

My girls were coming up with some really great ideas.

We then attempted some Harry Potter stuff.

 

[Gdad]

We then attempted some Harry Potter stuff.

Oh I can see right now I'll be doing this again once my girls see this.

Nice job.

 

[handicap18]

We had a great time in the backyard last night playing with this. We learned a lot and realized that we still need some practice. My girls were coming up with some really great ideas.

We then attempted some Harry Potter stuff.

WOA!! Way cool!!!

LOVE the Harry Potter idea!! GREAT work!!

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

Oh I can see right now I'll be doing this again once my girls see this.

Nice job.

WOA!! Way cool!!!

LOVE the Harry Potter idea!! GREAT work!!

Thank you. After the girls saw these on the computer they already have new ideas on how to improve the wand duel.

 

[Tink_Taylor]

AWESOME Pictures!

 

[saturndb]

looks like a lot of fun

Dave

 

[ColleenG]

Tonight we had a little fun with my new toy!

I used f/8, but think I should have used f/4. Hopefully it doesn't rain tomorrow night and we can try again.

 

[weHEARTmickey]

WOW! Everyone here is SO talented! I just sit & read through all the posts on the photography board in awe. Hopefully I'll be getting my own dslr soon & I can play & post, too. Great job!

 

[Alztybrn]

Is anyone willing to post a tutorial on how to do this? I would really like to try this!

 

[ColleenG]

Jeff listed the aperatures he used in his original post. I did mine at ISO 200 based on the EXIF from Jeff's pictures. I used f/8 but I think f/4 would have been better. The one thing I did find is that I had to manually focus the camera because otherwise it was too dark for the AF to pick up any thing to focus on. I used a 30 second shutter speed rather than bulb because I don't have a remote shutter release. This way I didn't have to hold the shutter button the whole time.

I had one of the kids stand on a marked spot and hit them with the flash from my P&S, then covered the lens with a black t-shirt. Had the kid step out of the frame. DH got in position to "write". Removed the t-shirt. Wrote. then covered the lens until the shutter closed.

HTH. Have fun. It really is easy. Once I figured out to use the manual focus the kids started really having fun and DH too. It's photography fun for the whole family.

 

[wenrob]

Is anyone willing to post a tutorial on how to do this? I would really like to try this!

Mark tells you how to do it here in this thread:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2219093

Colleen-I don't understand why you're covering the lens?

 

[ColleenG]

I thought you had to inorder to prevent blur from the person moving in and out of the frame, but now that you mention it I guess you don't have to if there is no flash on them. In my pics you couldn't see my DH when he was doing the writing.

I thought I read some where to cover the lens in between doing the flash and the writing.

 

[wenrob]

I thought you had to inorder to prevent blur from the person moving in and out of the frame, but now that you mention it I guess you don't have to if there is no flash on them. In my pics you couldn't see my DH when he was doing the writing.

I thought I read some where to cover the lens in between doing the flash and the writing.

If you're using a long enough shutter, the person should "disappear." Maybe what you read pertains to getting the same person in the same frame multiple times?

 

[Steve's Girl]

Well, over the 4th, we tried with sparklers. First off, my kids weren't following directions very well (what's new). So, the results were a little hit and miss. Secondly, I learned that this works best when it is really dark. We did some before it was really dark and got a lot of "ghosting". Like this...

I'm not sure what my kids were doing here, I think they were trying to write their names or something. I was just trying to get them to stop running over my tripod

 

[Gdad]

Check this out- this guy's taking it to the next level.

http://abduzeedo.com/amazing-light-paintings

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

Check this out- this guy's taking it to the next level.

http://abduzeedo.com/amazing-light-paintings

WOW! I'm going to need a lot more glow sticks

Here are a couple of our most recent attempts.

And still need to work on our patronuses.

 

[AndrewWG]

Wow, I tried this tonight and well..... I suck at it.

What is the sequence for these types of shots? Writing-Person wish flash, or Person with flash-writing? Does it matter? I tried person with flash, then writing but I think I wrote too fast or something.

 

[Gdad]

I don't think the sequence matters all that much-

I did have the revelation that it would be easier for me to write 'normal' facing the camera and just flip the image in photoshop later rather than trying to backwardize what I'm writing at the time. I'm a little slow sometimes.