I thought so too…and we tried it… but the power of an LED is far greater than a glowstick… and given that the blue “wraps” around the orange… it ends up looking way way wrong. I’ll have to find something with a) a little less kick b) something that can hold the second light without interfering with the trail… any time your hand/wrist body come between the camera and the light source while light painting, the light breaks and then looks wrong. =/
-I had the d90 set to a 5 second exposure at an f-stop around 10.
-Ultra High Intensity Glowsticks burn strong and hard… but only for a couple of minutes or so, so make your shots count!
-I set my focal range to manual so the camera wouldn’t change any settings while shooting.
-Setting it on a remote or timer works wonders too!
-Start drawing your stream OUT going INTO the gun… trust me, it’s easier and looks better.
-The subject ghostbuster must do their best to hold STILL during the 5 second exposure… otherwise “ghosting” will occur… (no pun intended)
-Have someone off to the side out of view hit your ghostbuster with an external flash, or a very bright flashlight… this will burn in your subject and make them look clear and defined. My flash person was hiding behind the car.
-Remember, you want the glowstick to be seen by the camera the whole 5 seconds… so think about your path as you approach while drawing…
-KEEP MOVING! If you stay still too long while drawing your image will burn in… if you look closely at some of the pictures, you can see my legs and my face because I held still too long.
I’m going to try this again another night… I have some ideas to make this better.
In a long exposure, anything moving (aside from light) is not picked up very much… you have to keep moving constantly. If you look very very closely on some of the pictures, you can see each of my foot steps and sometimes my face near the end of the particle thrower.
My wife does light writing, and we actually talked about doing something similar to this the other night. I think using a combination of this technique with a little PS would yield some awesome results.
Awesome! You’re photography really impressed me. Please feel free to share this around. I’m weary of seeing tired old After Effects proton streams plastered all over YouTube.
