I like playing around with lightpainting ever since I started photography because the possibilities were endless! One night I wanted to challenge myself to lightpaint using only my gadgets, so my iphone and my ipad.
I thought of using my iPhone as my main light to highlight the subject and my iPad to use as my background. I had an app in my iPad which had some cool patterns to use as a catchlight, then I saw a pattern which I knew would look great if I used it for lightpainting.
Stuff That You Need
- Tripod or anything that you can put your camera
onto - Flashlight, Tablet, Touchscreen phone
- A room that you can turn off all the ambient light
Settings
- Long Shutter (10sec or longer, depends on how long you will lightpaint)
- ISO and Aperture depends on how strong your flashlight is, lightpainting is really trial and error, so you have to chimp first to see if you need more on less light on your subject
How To
1. While the lights are still on put your camera on a tripod and aim at your subject. make sure that you can completely darken the room.
2. Pre-focus on your subject: focus, then switch to manual focus on your lens or on camera so that you can click the shutter when all the lights are off.
Normally my starting point is 20sec ISO 200, @ f8, but I change the aperture or the time depending on how well the exposure is.
Time Considerations
The longer you light an area, the more light it wil get, resulting in a brighter exposure
- Longer and Slower Lightpainting = More Light
- Faster = Less Light
Mixing iPhone and iPad for background effects
Here is a nice trick, get a pattern to show on your iPad and swing it behind the model to generate a nice looking ground
The Final Shot
After that I played around with just only using my iPad as my background then using flash for my main light. different patters will create different backgrounds – experiment!
More examples
