What are your suggestions for photographic light painting?

Hey. Just wondering if anyone had any good insight to some different options for light painting torches. I am not looking for expensive options. I generally avoid anything over $20. currently I use a gordon 27 led mini torch or 124 led big torch for structure painting along with a no name mil candlepower spot for a warmer tone. I use a few 12Vspotlights with gels over them for figure drawing and "grafitti". and a whole variety of battery powered toys and holiday lights for other effects. just wondering if there were maybe some other budget conscious choices out there or if I'm already getting the most out of the money I'm willing to spend. thanks.

With that kit, I'd suggest a couple of 5mW laser pointers (one red, one green). You can produce some amazing detail with them. I'm in the process of making a spirograph with one 'writing' the beam onto the hedges and trees at the bottom of our garden. Should be fun!

I'd be interested to know what settings you use on your camera. I'm using a Canon 20D set to 100ISO and the lens set to f8. I like the way the light can be slow moving and I can create nice sweeping effects. I also find at that setting the camera to a fairly insensitive mode rather than higher ISO gives me much less light creeping in from street lights etc.

I've only dabbled in this area though. I'm more into taking the 100-400mm IS lens and photographing wildlife. I'll be good at it one day!

good call on the lasers. keep forgetting about those suckers. As far as settings go, if you check out my photostream from my signature link, you can click on any of my LP pics and then click on the "more properties" link in the bottom right corner and my exif will tell you anything you want to know. different situations tend to call for different settings. I shoot with a D90 and tend to start around f11 at 100 iso then tweak up or down from there. I'm with you though, I like being able to slowly move the lights rather than dash around like mad. makes it easier to control the composition.

Some of those pictures are incredible! Wow!!

Ok, I can see I'm really going to have to work much harder at this. :bow:

LED lights are a great source for light painting. Altering them to do what you want is another thing.

I am currently waiting on about 1000 bulbs from china and some lighting boards to see what i can create. The lights are bright. Putting other colors or diffusers in front of them is also very effective.

Lasers are good. but make sure they are bright if you want to use other lights in the same picture. or else move em real slow. lol.

Check out some ideas on my stream if ya want.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiofour/

I have recently switched to a Ultrafire L2, with an MC-E dropin. At distances over 6m, it just flood lights the area. with a light yellow gel over the top, it is great for painting trees and grass etc, without the gel, it is good for an industrial type look on steel and grey stone buildings. Its cheap, and its small. For pure flood work, i found that a maglite with the terralux TLE-300 dropin works good. Just remove the optics, and you have about 500-600 lumens of non-directional light to play with

As for graffiti type stuff, i found that the little fauxtons in different colours are really helpful, plus they are cheap. You can get a whole bunch of mates together in a shot and draw multiple areas at the same time. The problem is, that the brightness is different between each colour, so its best to run the batteries down a bit on the brighter ones, then try to pick lights of similar brightness.

Lights with bad PWM can make for an interesting technique too... the stuttering shows up in fast movement. also happens with some cheap green lasers, I have a little keychain laser where you can see the dotted light as you move it around on a wall, on camera, that looks pretty good too

I don't want to hijack a thread, but how do you do those water-fountain like effects where the light is coming out of the centra and landing on the ground?

go to flickr and search the light junkies group for "wire wool spinning". it's fun but dangerous. which makes it more fun right?

Holy **** ! ... I think I'll stick to my LEDs for the moment.
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