Lights Out Light Painting

A weekend light painting project found some different uses for a blank CD. Items and tools needed for this project include a digital DSLR camera, a black sheet or table cloth, an eye dropper or a tool capable of creating small droplets of water, various gels for a camera flash unit, a tripod and mag lights, LED lights or flashlights. I used mag lights in the photos taken this weekend. A very dark room, garage etc is also needed. Light painting is essentially a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. In this case I slowly moved a mag light around the CD. Ironically keeping the camera as still as possible was the goal here, hence the tripod. With you DSLR set it to “bulb” and play around with f stops. I found myself using f11 to f18 to get the results below. These were taken with a Nikon D200, ISO 100-200. I used a couple of storage bins to position my camera just above the CD and used a small zoom lens to focus in on the CD. As far as the streaks of blue and white light, I had my son wave the two LED mag lights to get the result. And there you have it some crazy, cool photos produced with some items laying around the house.

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2 thoughts on “Lights Out Light Painting

  • January 16, 2012 at 5:03 pm
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    What’s that song again? “I’ve got too much, time on my hands….” Just kidding, these are some cool pics. Wish I had the time.

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  • January 18, 2012 at 9:08 am
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    While I appreciate the extreme detail that Chris is giving on his photo descriptions; what is this? Trippy light painting photography and photos from every amateur’s favorite iphone app instagram seem like something that Chris should put on his own personal blog. Love the community, sports, etc pics that are on target; keep those up.

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