• 12-06-2013, 04:08 PM
    kookjai
    2 Attachment(s)
    Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    So last night we went out for a ride and did some photos along the way.

    I was using a D7000 and tried some longer exposures, but hoped to get longer traces of light.

    Suggestions for more balanced light in these shots?

    Attachment 92474Attachment 92475
  • 12-06-2013, 04:12 PM
    kookjai
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    first shot I had a helmet light which I uncovered as the rider went by... maybe more of a flash would have worked...
  • 12-06-2013, 04:15 PM
    Photo-John
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by kookjai View Post
    So last night we went out for a ride and did some photos along the way.

    I was using a D7000 and tried some longer exposures, but hoped to get longer traces of light.

    Suggestions for more balanced light in these shots?

    Cool subject and a fun technical challenge! I think you've got a good start and the second one especially, establishes a good baseline. One nice thing about digital is it makes it really easy to experiment. The first thing I think you need to do is figure out the ambient exposure. For that, I would shoot on a tripod in manual mode and keep adding light until you had the amount of fill you want. After you figure that out - then you add the rider and bike lights.
  • 12-06-2013, 04:17 PM
    kookjai
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    I'm also thinking that the amount of light these days on the new LED headlights are almost too much... The second photo the rider has over 1200 lumens of light from the combined lights...
  • 12-06-2013, 05:00 PM
    Photo-John
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by kookjai View Post
    I'm also thinking that the amount of light these days on the new LED headlights are almost too much... The second photo the rider has over 1200 lumens of light from the combined lights...

    Yeah, I thought about that. The first step is to get the ambient exposure right. And then you will probably need to play with the output on the bike lights to balance it all out. The cool thing is you D7000 sensor is pretty damn good, and you've got a lot of light to work with - especially with the light reflected from the snow. Another thing you can try is actually lighting the scene with the bike lights - painting it in. If you use a tripod and you have Photoshop, you could easily layer up two separate exposure, even - one for the ambient and one for the rider.
  • 12-06-2013, 05:02 PM
    Photo-John
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by kookjai View Post
    first shot I had a helmet light which I uncovered as the rider went by... maybe more of a flash would have worked...

    I just noticed this post. I real flash would definitely work better - especially if you want to freeze the rider. If that's the case then it's all about flash duration - something you can't replicate with a bike light.
  • 12-07-2013, 01:02 PM
    dhyravy
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    The best way to get these kinds of shots is to use "bulb" shutter and rear curtain sync on the flash. You don't want a "proper" exposure without the flash since that would create blurring of the subject and overexposure when the flash fires. I use a similar technique to get photos of family with fireworks etc. in the background. Usually somewhere around ISO 200/f8 or higher/bulb shutter/rear curtain flash sync. Needless to say, the camera needs to be on a tripod or other steady mount and I like to use a remote release to prevent my fat fingers from causing movement. YMMV
  • 11-19-2014, 06:00 AM
    DCDickerson
    Re: Painting with light and other winter friendly photo tips...
    The pictures are captured very nicely and I liked the concept of light painting. I think flash will be best way to have custom paintings and will work better than using other sources of light.