Light Painting

[ddietiker]

This was my first attempt at light painting. What better place than North Window with Turret Arch in the background. I had never seen this tried at this location so thought I would give it a go while the sun was rising to add a little extra light. Learned a lot with this try.


D3x, f2.8 and a 30 second exposure.

 

[BrianH]

Very nice......did you paint from a distance or under the arch?

 

[ddietiker]

From a distance with a head lamp.

 

[Brianjbean]

have you tried using colored gels? you can do some really fun things...a headlamp might not be powerful enough to paint with em but to give you an idea here's a photo i did while camping over the weekend. i painted the red light, blue inside the car, red on the break lights and just used plain light on the trees. The exposure was 7 1/2 minutes.

 

[ddietiker]

have you tried using colored gels?

Being my first attempt, I was just trying to get something presentable. I may try some different things as I get better


Things I learned

At night, f2.8 had perfectly acceptable sharpness when focused on the wall.
Manually focusing in the dark is very hard
30 seconds is a tad to long for the exposure to keep the stars from showing movement. I think I will try and keep exposure to around 20 seconds next time.

 

[Brianjbean]

Being my first attempt, I was just trying to get something presentable. I may try some different things as I get better


Things I learned

At night, f2.8 had perfectly acceptable sharpness when focused on the wall.
Manually focusing in the dark is very hard
30 seconds is a tad to long for the exposure to keep the stars from showing movement. I think I will try and keep exposure to around 20 seconds next time.

yep, 30 seconds is the absolute limit for freezing stars, which pretty much requires an f2.8 lens unless you wanna shoot at iso1600+ - which ain't gonna be pretty! great first attempt. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

 

[BobH]

Manually focusing in the dark is very hard
30 seconds is a tad to long for the exposure to keep the stars from showing movement. I think I will try and keep exposure to around 20 seconds next time.

Bring a bright flashlight, shine it on the subject (or better yet have an assistant do it) and focus either manual or auto, then lock the focus.

Yes, stars move quickly don't they? Suprising how fast you see blur.

You can go either way though, stay under 30, or go well over 30 so that the blur is obvious enough that it's clear it was intentional. Star trails look cool, but really short ones look like blur.

 

[BobH]

Yes, stacking would also work, and it usually has the advantage of reducing noise too.

On the other hand, I think star trails look cool. Then again, you can stack and keep the star trails if you choose.

(Or so I'm told, living in the Puget Sound stars are mostly something I read about, not see first hand.)

 

[Tony S]

Nicley done for one of your first attmepts. I think the slight movement of the stars works on this, seems to make them a bit more visible than smaller points of light would.

 

[BrianH]

so for a circle in the stars do you point at a specific star or just vertical? Im gonna have to play with this some

 

[BobH]

As Jake mentions, you'd need to use the North Start (Polaris) as the rotation point.

However, to do that would probably mean you can't frame your subject. So simply frame the shot to suit the subject, and let the star circle show up however it does. You don't get a full circle in most cases, but it doesn't matter, it still looks good.