How do you take flashlight beam pics w/a digicam?

sodakar, I am by no means a camera expert. I just want that written first before I start suggesting anything.

On my camera (Olympus C-700UZ), I have a few different modes on the dial. One of the modes is labelled "A" which is for full automatic mode. Basically, point and shoot. The camera adjusts ISO and shutter speed automatically in order to try to give consistent results no matter actual lighting conditions. I have another mode that gives me complete manual control over the camera, including ISO setting (100, 200, 400, 800), and shutter speed (from 1/1000 sec to 16 seconds).

I think of ISO as the sensitivity of the "film", which in this case is the CCD element in the camera. Higher ISO means greater sensitivity. What I think it means is that the shutter speed can be increased, yet the brightness/contrast of the picture will be just as good as a lower ISO/lower shutter speed. The bonus of high ISO/higher shutter speed is that action shots are not as blurry since the shutter is open for such a short time (less time for objects to move).

Now, for normal cameras you can just buy different kinds of film (ISO 400, ISO 800, etc). But with a digital camera you are stuck with the same CCD element for the life of the camera. Some elements are better than others and some of it has to do with how expensive the camera was (quality of components, etc). When you start going into the ISO 800 range, especially with dark shots, you will start to move into the edge of the signal-to-noise area of the CCD element's sensitivity range. Basically you'll start to see a "starfield" with many thousands of pixels of differing color throughout the entire picture. This starfield effect can wash out any other faint light in the picture, effectively ruining the shot. Taking nighttime shots with a digital camera is very hard. (for me)

If your camera has a "manual" mode where you can select the ISO and shutter speed and perhaps even aperture size, then you can manually set these values and leave the camera that way for every flashlight you want to take a beam shot of. For extreme comparisons between, say, a MAG Solitaire and a Streamlight UltraStinger (ahem, perhaps that is too extreme ), you may end up with one shot either completely washed out (due to the manual camera settings being too sensitive) or too dark (due to low light output of the flashlight combined with the low sensitivity settings of the camera).

The cool thing about digital cameras is that you can experiment without spending money on real film and you get instantaneous results. You mess up, just erase and start over.

Have fun and experiment!

- Brian

I have a Fujifilm 2600 and have to take it out of automatic mode when doing beamshots. I just play around with settings until the photos look as close to the naked eye as I can get.

Doing a little research it looks like you can controll ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation and white balance. All of this found here http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/s110/specs.html So it looks like you can do what Mr Bmsmith is saying.

I can probably take some examples with my camera of different settings if you want (and I have time). But like in the post above the most fun is playing with your camera in all settings and see what comes out best.

Thanks a bunch for the great input! I've most definitely been playing around with the settings, but wanted to know if there was a "recommended settting" or a "correct way to do it".

Unfortunately, I can't adjust ISO or shutter speed, but I believe I can force it to stay at a certain shutter speed -- perhaps that is as good as it gets.

Thanks again, everyone!

In short, how do you take accurate flashlight beam photos with a digicam?

I always try to take beam pictures for my friends to show them how much better flashlight A is over flashlight B. But when I put my digicam (Canon PowerShot S110) into no-flash mode, it still auto-brightness-balances.

For instance, if you saw these photos, you'd guess that they were both pretty bright lights:



While they both appear to be quite bright in both photos, in real life, the 2AA Mini-Mag on the left is faaaaaaar dimmer than the SureFire E2e on the right. The digicam is compensating to make the photo appear the same regardless of light applied...

Now... for the above example, there's a work-around -- I can take a photo of the 2AA Mini-Mag and the SureFire E2e, and the *relative* brightness will be evident on the photo.

But... what if I want to try to show someone the difference between a P90 and a P91 lamp assembly, but I only have one C3? I end up with:



Er... the photo of the P90 (left) looks brighter than the P91 (right)... Sigh.

What setting do I need to adjust on my digicam? I'm already guessing that such a fancy feature is probably not available in this basic (yet expensive) digicam, but... I'd still like to learn what the "correct" way to photograph a beam photo is...

Thanks in advance, and thanks to all of you who provide us with wonderful beam photos... A picture is indeed a thousand words...

Sodakar, I can't answer your question but you might want to change your topic heading...there was another recent topic called, no joke, "How to take flashlight pics without a digicam" so they look extremely similar although they are not!

I would try just taking pics at the same time of the two lights. As for wanting to compare two different LAs using the same light, I dunno, never been in that position...yet.