I had fun playing with light last night and I thought of making a simple tutorial using the other set of photos. I just went crazy twirling lights all over Mari, Taiga, Danboard and Mayoi! Anyway, I'm using a DSLR so this tutorial is for that camera only. I will not be teaching you on how to do those shapes because it's entirely up to your imagination! However, if you're using a point and shoot camera, or a camera phone you must be familiar with some terms I'll be using here.
Here's my set up last night, I was slumped on the floor and I was surrounded with lights all over. HAHAHA. My computer desk at my room was too narrow so I choose to set it up on the floor instead, but I had to keep my dog and cat outside or else they'll just sit anytime while I'm doing my shots.
See what I mean? XD
To get started, I used two sets of christmas lights, two lampshades (the head was wrapped in a thin cloth which acts as a diffuser) and a sheet of black felt paper (for the background) coz the darker, the better. I just positioned my camera across where the figures are. I used a 50mm 1.8 lens, which I currently have at that time, you may use a standard kit lens (18-55mm), doesn't matter because we'll just use a small aperture for light painting.
1. Prepare your camera for a long exposure shot by setting it to 5 seconds, f/8.0 and ISO 100. This is the part where you have to experiment. I played with 5 seconds and f/8 as a trial and error at first until I get the thickness of the light streaks that I want. Yeah, actually it matters! If you're familiar at how a camera's aperture works which is, the bigger the apperture, the larger amount of light it will get in.
Look here, in this shot, the aperture is f/5
Notice the lines behind Mayoi, this one is f/8, see the difference?
You'll get thicker lines on an f/5 aperture, which I used mostly on the later part of the photos.
2. Next, position the figures according to your desired composition. Make sure that it is secured enough so that it won't get knocked down while you're playing with light which is on Step 3.
3. Get the lights! Now for the previous photo, I freely swayed the christmas lights around Mayoi to get that pretty light streaks. Pretty cool, huh? :3 You may actually use a pen light, small led light, even a laser light as long as it's not too bright or else it will be just the light you're gonna capture.
For this shot, I carefully used the tip of the christmas light to draw a light force thingie on Domo-kun and Taiga's swords. It's like an epic light battle LOL!
Danbo got a little thunderbolt on his hands. I bet Thor wouldn't mind.
Kirino: Ohh, look I'm playing with light!
Taiga's wooden katana suddenly showed a burst of light!
TIP: You need to do the light painting thing within 5 seconds (or whatever exposure you timed it in) before the shutter opens, or else you'll get a mess of light around the picture.
TIP: You need to do the light painting thing within 5 seconds (or whatever exposure you timed it in) before the shutter opens, or else you'll get a mess of light around the picture.
You may use your imagination while playing with light! If I wasn't on the floor and had a bigger area, I could've written my name using those christmas lights! But hey, there'a always a next time! ;) I hope you enjoyed my simple tutorial!
- 4:22 AM
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Hi, I'm Pinkcheeks - I'm passionate about toy photography and this blog is where I want to show how much I love this wonderful hobby!
