9

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / Light Painting

Check the LCD screen on the back of the camera

after you have created each image. This is where

you see whether the vision you had while doing

the painting actually worked out the way you

thought it did. Because the actual light used in

the exposure comes from the flashlight or flash,

you don’t have to change the camera settings

much to control the exposure; you can just change

the amount of light you used. If the image is too

dark, just paint a little longer, if the image is too

bright, paint a little less.

When I do this type of photography, I like to use

the cable release and the camera set to bulb mode

so that when I think I have added enough light I

can stop the exposure and don’t have to wait for

the full 30 seconds. Or sometimes I have found

that 30 seconds isn’t quite enough, like in Figure

9-11 where I needed a full 31 seconds to paint in

the details of the Nikon D3.

At times the area where you practice your light

painting may not be completely dark; that’s when

I use a smaller aperture like f/16 or even f/22 to

allow as little unwanted light in as possible during

the exposure and I use a more powerful flashlight

and a slower shutter speed. I also usually set the

ISO as low as the camera goes because I want to

really use the light to paint in the photo and don’t

want the sensor very sensitive to the light. This

type of photography is all about experimenting,

and part of that is to play with the exposure set-

tings. Try a shallow depth of field and see if that

affects the amount of time you can keep the shut-

ter open before being affected by ambient light, or

try a very bright flashlight for a short period of

time compared to a less intense light for a longer

period of time. There is no right or wrong set of

exposure settings.

Check the focus every couple of

frames by using the LCD screen on

the back of the camera zoomed into 100 percent pre-

view and centered on the focus point.

tip

Now that the focus is set, make sure that the
exposure mode is set to manual; because the light
present in your image only appears after the shut-
ter is opened, there is no way for the camera to
accurately determine the white balance of the
light. The white balance is one of the things that
you can adjust easily in post-processing, but there
are ways to get close to the results you want
before you ever take a photo. The key is to set the
white balance for the light you are going to be
using and to not allow the camera to use the auto
white balance setting, which will change from
image to image, even if only very slightly.

The proper exposure

Because it is impossible to measure the light in
the scene before the shutter is opened, the cam-
era’s metering system is useless for this type of
photography. There are times when you will add
light to a scene that already has ambient light, so
you will need to balance the light.

So, if you can’t measure the light, then where do
you start and what settings should you use? The
initial settings that I like to use are ISO 100, f/8.0,
and 30 seconds. If your camera has a Bulb mode
and you have a cable release, then you can use
longer exposure times. However, by using the lon-
gest shutter speed available on the camera, you
don’t actually need to buy any extra equipment.