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This old 1938 1-ton Ford V8 (with 85 whole horsepower!) is slowly decaying on the family property...

Recently tried what I could do with it photographically

Both from D2H + Nikon 28-70/2.8 AF-S

Click for a larger version on black

#1 - Lightpainting with a minimaglight


#2 Badge-ology

(complete with 100% genuine flare!)

Comments welcome!

Great!! Love the first one!!

How did you do the light painting with the minimaglight?

Cudn't see the photos... Something to do with Firefox?

g/day daniel i met a couple camping recently and they was telling me they do light painting with a dolghin light.i didn't see any of their images
so this gives me a glimpse of the concept. by the way i do like your image, could you tell me what settings you used for it.
cheers pa

Daniel,

I love the first of these. Great lighting, great use of colour ... this has an almost ghostly feel to it, coming out of the dark, as it is.

What is the bright object on the bonnet though? It almost looks like a reflection of one of the headlamps, but surely it's not?

Thanks Gary.

The bright object on the middle front of the bonnet is one of those old style bonnet latches where you twist to release... with this one being rusted open

It's caught the light from the (blue gel) SB800 fired at camera left

gstark wrote:Daniel,

I love the first of these. Great lighting, great use of colour ... this has an almost ghostly feel to it, coming out of the dark, as it is.

What is the bright object on the bonnet though? It almost looks like a reflection of one of the headlamps, but surely it's not?

Yi-P and Pa -

I'll give a bit of a run down how I set this up - I'm still learning more technique about this kind of capture, but getting there.

I work with a bit of a plan and a bit of shoot-n-chimp method

I use a mini-maglite (the 2xAA battery version, it lives in my photo bag ) as like all maglites you can adjust the beam from broad to pencil (and it's bright, compact and lightweight). The bigger C cell versions with Xenon bulbs are really good for very large objects.


Shooting Plan:

1. set up your tripod and cam, use the maglite to illuminate your subject while you figure out your composition (if it's really dark)

2. shine the maglite on the focus point of the subject so the focus system can get a lock (either MF or AF will really appreciate the bit of help). If the subject is a bit further away than what the maglite can light up enough, sit the maglite on or near the subject while you get focus (in this case, sitting the maglite on the hood pointing it at the windscreen frame).

3. move your AF/MF focus mode switch to manual to prevent the camera from attempting to focus again before shooting

4. I usually work with a 30 sec or so exposure as I currently don't have the remote for the D2h. Set up a guestimate exposure time of a about 30sec @ f/8 ISO 200 or so. If I'm using either my D70 or D2H, I enable the Noise Reduction setting (dark frame subtraction to remove CCD heat up effects)

5. Fire off a shot without using the maglite or flash. Chimp the result. Background too light? How much ambient light is lighting up the subject? Will I need to paint less in a particular area because of moonlight/streetlight? - need more? open up the aperture a bit.
Need less ambient light, too much other background subject being shown? stop down the aperture to f/11 or so

6. put some coloured gels on - I usually use coloured gift wrap plastic (celophane) as it is cheap (+ disposable) and attach it over the top of the flash head using a rubber band or scotch tape.

7, shoot-n-chimp time!
This exposure was made by a blue gel over a Nikon SB-800 and a green gel over a Nikon SB-600.

I started the exposure using the 10 Second self timer (using the 10 seconds to get into place), and manually popped the blue flash near the left headlight, the green flash once in the each of the side windows, once in the back window (angling the flash head up slightly) and once on the right headlight but from a further distance.

Once the flashes were popped off, I started the light painting with the maglite by standing out of the field of view on the right side, for approx 15 seconds (guestimate).

done!

Tips I've discovered:
* the faster you move the maglite, the smoother the light paint.
* cover the rear info LCD on your flash with black gaffer / cloth tape (shows up as a streak with you moving about)
* keep the maglite already turned on a focused to a pecil beam in your pocket before you start the exposure (makes it easier for shorter exposures)
* wear dark clothing

thanks for the information daniel,i'll have to give it a go some time.
cheers pa

That is a superb image Daniel and one of the finest I've seen from you. It not only shows your great creativity, but your mastery of the technique. I like everything about this image. You started with an interesting subject, rather than letting the fancy lighting do all the work and then layered all those wonderful colour and light effects over the top to give an excellent finished result. Thanks for sharing both the image and the technique.

Daniel,

A great shot. Very different.

When you mention that you paint with the mag lite, I would like some clarification please ... Is the area that has been painted the grill and front bumper? Or is it all over the front of the car?

Does the light painting show up parts of the car not covered by the other flashes?

Thanks

Russell

Good work Daniel! I like the slight ambient light from behind, adds that extra element..

RE the "cover your flashes LCD" tip - it's just as easy to turn the LCD off via your flashes menu system.

rflower - the light painting in this case is anywhere that is illuminated which isn't blue or green (the flash heads were completely covered with the celophane gift wrap)... so essentially it's pretty much all of the front of the car.

The effect of the flash isn't all that strong as the flash only fires at a very reduced rate when you hit the flash test button on the back of the SB800/600 (and is futher reduced when you add multiple layers of coloured celophane over the top )


beetleboy - but turning off the LCD illumination would mean having to use the SB-800 menu system

Thanks for sharing your technique Daniel. What a worthy winner of image of the week! Congratulations.