Light painting question

[Lesley Jones]

I'm off to Cornwall for three days in September. I don't have a lot of time, but I have most of my locations planned. I will be staying very close to one of the old tin mines and I planned to wander up there for the first sunset. I think I will take a picnic blanket and stay for some star trails - I already have Stellarium on my first ever smart phone! I've been wondering whether to use a torch on the mine or not. I've never done this before (the star trails twice, but not the light painting). Is it difficult to get right? What sort of torch would I need and how long should I paint? Are there any other questions I should be asking?

 

[Andrew Kent]

Hi Lesley,

This is how I would approach this type of shot:

Light paint the mine, use any powerful torch, Cree ones work well, but traditional bulbs can have a nicer warm tone.
When you are happy with your light paint shot, change the camera settings if required ready for the star trail.

I always use 30 second exposures stacked in startrails.exe. This means light pollution is not a problem. It also means you can have more than one attempt at the light paint part.

Star trail settings I use are F4-5, 30 second exposure, on continuous shooting, ISO 800 (You get the fainter stars).
For the light paint part, you can use lower ISO, just remember to put it back to 800 before the trail part.

Allow it to run for at least 30 minutes, but an hour or more looks better.

When you get home, choose the light paint shot you want to use. Use Photoshop to black out the whole sky (Then the stars won’t show up out of place in the trail.
Next put the black sky light paint shot, and all the star trail 30 sec exposure shots into startrails.exe. It will spit out your finished shot!

Sometimes it’s best to open the finished shot in Photoshop and increase the contrast a little. This blacks the sky, and brightens the stars.

Also another tip... When shooting the 30 second trail shots, set your camera to jpg, or at least RAW + Jpeg. Startrails.exe won’t take RAW files, so if you don’t do this you would have to convert them all from RAW to Jpeg first!

This stacking method means you can try all kinds of light painting on the mine. Plain white, or coloured gels over torches and flashes, you in your own shot, wire wool spins, anything realy.All safe in the knowledge that the trail part of the shot can’t be ruined by a fluff up on the light painting part!

Good luck with it, hope it turns out well!

Cheers,

Andy.

 

[Darren Turner]

awesome idea Lesley sounds like you have been inspired with creativity from RPF..............great advice to Andy, i just learnt a few things from the Masters

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Pulled that one out of the bag Andy! Nice one... Just saved me a few lines. Lol.

Just to add, the brighter the light, the lower Aperture and ISO (without telling you how to suck eggs), and vice versa. A 30 second mark is a good exposure length to maintain a good frame.
Saying that, I found that doing my light mummy's at 100 ISO, f/13 and 150secs (average) on the Olympus seriously had a detrimental effect on the pictures noise. So keeping the ISO low was not always a benefit in noise reduction depending on how long the exposure was (that can't be helped though, as light mummies cannot be rushed ) Keeping it around the 30 sec mark by maintaining a nice exposure with the correct apature and ISO, you'll find that your frames will turn out very nice.

On the note of torches, if you have a tesco close to you, they have Cree torches for sale which are 15 quid and take 2 D batteries. I think they pumps out at about 200 lumens and are bright enough in any circumstance.....
Beneficial they are to light up a mine. If you've not experimented before you go to cornwall to do some light painting, then I would recommend that you do acheive an understanding before hand. That way, you'll get the shot(s) your after at the right time rather that losing the shot(s) because your working it out too late.

I am really looking forward to seeing how your results turn out!

 

[Beth Carter]

i do the same as andy and use startrails.exe too. i think the website is www.Startrails.de-Home. i'm sloppy with the lightpainting and it's easier to stack a couple of foregrounds in photoshop and pick and choose what i want to use.

shoot at least one frame without the lightpainting, that way you can use that one if you decide the lightpainting isn't what you want. you could also shoot a brighter shot for the foreground, sometimes this can work out nice if you have a full moon.

i use a tactical flashlight that has a cooler bulb.

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Looks like your a pro already Beth.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Wow! That's a lot to think about and thank you very much. The two star trails I did last year were around 30 and 25 minute exposures and oddly enough I didn't get any noise. I had read about the other method though and I think I really must do some test shots. I think a big torch will be a good idea anyway. Don't laugh, but last year I found my way out of a wooded car park and up Mam Tor in total darkness with a silly little six inch torch. It's the one I use to check the chickens are in bed during the winter.

I'm also thinking about cards because I only have three, although they have always lasted to the end of the trip. (Even though I bracket some of the landscape shots, I've never taken more than a couple of hundred images in total). I use my Mum's old lap top to back up, but I don't entirely trust it. I'd rather come home with everything still intact on the cards.

Now I have to think what I can paint locally to test...

 

[Dan Cattermole]

I think my noise was generated from my good old soulful Olympus and it crappy little sensor. Lol