tactical light use for photography?

[picard]

Has anyone use their tactical flashlight as background light for night photography? Does the flashlight provide good background light? I want to used my wolfeye tactical light to raise background light to shoot a few shots from my sony DSC V3 digital camera

 

[X33]

I've never used a flashlight solely for that purpose but I guess it would work. The hotspot of the beam could be a problem. Not sure how floody your light is. Ideally, in my opinion you'll want an almost even output without hotspot in the middle. Differences in light output show up more clearly in photos, because the camera is more sensitive than the human eye. Not sure what you want to light. Try putting some sort of diffusing material in front of the light or try reflecting the light of a smooth white surface. Hope this helps a bit. Also do a manual white balance of a white piece of paper if your camera allows or try putting the white balance setting of the camera to tungsten if you use an incan light. That should make the pictures less yellow.

 

[TENNlumens]

Just keep the light moving to "Paint" the background. This will compensate for any hotspots.

Please post any images when you complete your shoot.

 

[jtice]

I "paint" with my lighta.

Use a long exposure, and wave the light around, painting light onto the area.

 

[paulr]

I think you're far better off using a conventional flash. The lumen output is far higher than that of any flashlight. A typical shoe mount flash at max power might give 200 flashes of 1 msec each on four AA cells. That's comparable to a flashlight using four AA's with 0.2 seconds of runtime! A normal flashlight (Tec 40, say) might put out 60 lumens for 2 hours, so if the efficiency is comparable, the electronic flash would be 36000 times brighter or 2 million lumens! But only for 1/1000th of a second before you have to wait a few sec for the capacitor to recharge...

 

[TrueBlue]

Beside "painting" with a flashlight at night using a still picture camera and tripod for long exposures to give either a flood or spot effect, the flashlight, especially if it has variable output, can be used as a shadow fill light under bright light conditions. The fill light would be used if the contrast range from bright to dark is more than the lighting ratio a camera (film or digital) can handle. A flash either on or off the camera can also be used. A reflector with either metal or white board can also be used as a fill light with the advantage that the fill light will never overpower the main light. It is best to use a spotmeter to view light ratios.

Using the light as a fill light might look a little unusual if the tint of the light was way off the tint of the main light.

Using a flashlight to paint at night it is best to keep the light moving around at a consistent speed and area unless you are going for a spot effect. And, of course, do not point the beam of light at the camera. You'll get one or more weird trails of streaking bright orbs on the picture doing that.

 

[SilverFox]

Hello Picard,

I don't know about night use... but I have used my Heliotek light to take pictures inside a CL02 mixing tank. I used the diffuser for general shots and flipped the diffuser off for more detailed "area of interest" shots.

The camera seemed to adjust properly to the LED light as far as white balance goes. My Heliotek has a pretty good tint, but I was expecting some off color pictures.

It worked very well.

Tom

 

[picard]

thanks for the tips guys. I just want to use my tactical light as a supplement to the flash thats all. I thought that additional background light would improve color clarity.

 

[vtunderground]

[ QUOTE ]
picard said:
Has anyone use their tactical flashlight as background light for night photography? Does the flashlight provide good background light?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely! I use my Surefire E2e all the time for low light photography. The wide spot & bright spill are great... here's an example:

Nothing special, just a pitch-black crawlspace painted with my E2e, 15 second exposure. The flashlight reaches further that a camera flash would, and provides a more even light with less shadows.

 

[picard]

what was ISO & aperture setting on your camera?

wow, that's a good picture of E2e as background light. What kind of camera did you use to shoot this picture? What were the setting of ISO and aperture ?

 

[TORCH_BOY]

Re: what was ISO & aperture setting on your camera?

I remember using an Eveready Dolfin with a cheap instamatic
camera, the shots did not realy turn out that good.

 

[vtunderground]

Re: what was ISO & aperture setting on your camera?

[ QUOTE ]
picard said:
wow, that's a good picture of E2e as background light. What kind of camera did you use to shoot this picture? What were the setting of ISO and aperture ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Canon Powershot A75, f2.8, ISO 50, 15-sec exposure.

 

[picard]

Re: what was ISO & aperture setting on your camera?

hey vtunderground, what the heck is this crawl space? It looks like escape tunnel for the jedi in starwars movie

 

[chamenos]

Re: what was ISO & aperture setting on your camera?

i use my surefire M3 for night photography a lot. the sheer output, colour rendition and smooth beams of incandescent surefires make them very suitable for such purposes. i bought a beamshaper for my M3 for more versatality.

this is one of the nicer shots of a series of sliding grills that a friend of mine took, which was illuminated by an M3 (without the beamshaper):

a photo of an abandoned psychiatric institute, overexposed, and illuminated by the M3:

edit: if the photos don't appear, cut and paste the url in a new window and it should show up /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Paul_in_Maryland]

Re: what was ISO & aperture setting on your camer

Ikelite and perhaps other diving light makers also market their wares to photographers who need brief bright light.

 

[picard]

cool picture of psychiatric institute

thats cool picture of psychiatric instute. I didn't know the M3 can light up that much background space.

 

[chamenos]

Re: cool picture of psychiatric institute

picard: thanks! i'll let my friend who took the photo know what you think /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

by the way, the sky is that colour because the shot was severely over-exposed (it was actually taken in the middle of the night), and i did pan the beam of the M3 around a bit to cover more of the building's facade. the photo was taken from a distance as well.

 

[jtice]

Re: cool picture of psychiatric institute

here are a couple shots that I used the "painting" method on

Most are over 8 second exposures, painted with mostly Mag led Mods.

 

[attowatt]

Re: cool picture of psychiatric institute

Whoa,

Too cool John. Is that a green led headlamp someone's wearing in picture #2?
Also what type of camera you using for 8 second exposure?

I have a sony w1 and dont think I can set up for overexposure.

Jim

 

[jtice]

Re: cool picture of psychiatric institute

Jim, thats a chemical glow stick on his head.
You would be amazed how well you can see in a pitch black cave with glow sticks.
Good for the coupld feet around you.

Most all my shots on my site are done with either a Canon A60, or Canon A95.
They will do up to 15 seconds exposure, at 400 ISO.
Though I try to keep the ISO lower, so its less grainy.

~John