If you’re interested in light-painting outdoors, you’ll need to find an interesting subject while it is still light out so you can set up your composition. Make a few exposures while it’s light so you can fine-tune your composition. Once it starts to get dark, you can begin creating the light painted photograph.

Set the camera on a tripod with exposure set to manual. You’ll have to guess at the correct exposure since once it gets dark, your exposure meter will not help. Start off with a shutter speed of a minute or two and an aperture of f/8 or so. Trip the shutter and then walk around your subject lighting it with a powerful flashlight or a handheld strobe that you can set off manually. Move the flashlight slowly or trigger the flash repeatedly to get enough light on your subject.

Check the results on your camera’s LCD. If the image is too dark or too light, adjust the exposure and try again. If you want to record some of the ambient light in addition to your light painting, you’ll need a longer exposure. If not, you can set the aperture to f/22 to record less ambient light.

Light painting is hit-or-miss, so you’ll have to keep trying different settings and different amounts of flash. Once, you get the exposure right and get a well exposed image on the LCD, you can try moving the camera around for different compositions and try putting colored gels over your light source.

Good Luck

Alan

If you need longer, you can take more than one exposure and then combine them in Photoshop. As long as you’re shooting in a completely dark environment and your camera stays in one place on a tripod, the resulting composite will look seamless.

i want to make lightpainting, but at first i need to know, how can i make longer photographs with the G11, for example 5 sec to write my name with a lamp.

greetings
Philip

Sorry for the late reply. Been busy. I’ve photographed the lava flow on the big island of Hawaii from the Kalapana viewing area. For that, the lava looks best at twilight, so you’ll need a long lens, sturdy tripod and high ISO – and a good flashlight to find your way back after dark. I would imagine the same would apply to any eruption since you won’t want to get too close.

I haven’t photographed a lot of stage shows, but you’ll need a fast lens with vibration reduction for handheld shooting. Shoot it wide open at a high ISO. You won’t want to use a flash. It probably won’t be allowed but, even if it was, the photos will be better lit by the stage lights.

Good luck,
Alan

Any xtras I needed to make a photo of an erupting volcano at night and a ballet performance with limited light (only few lights at the stage area)? (e.g. maybe a tripod? pls advice..)Thx in advance…

Kind regards,
Myra.-

shucks!!! thx for the info. i guess i’ll save my $$$ and bypass the wireless remote. i’m excited to try light painting which we will learn soon. I’ll be sure to chk out Dennis Mammana’s site for some tips as well!
thx for your help!

cindy