24 DIGITAL CAMERA^ SEPTEMBER 2019
Call in some light streaks
Charlie Marshall shows how to light your subject
using only your mobile phone in a dark room5 | CREATIVE LIGHTINGou don’t need loads of fancy lighting
kit to get great results when it comes
to product photography. For this
setup, I used a black background
(a £12 blind from Ikea), a piece of perspex, the
main subject (an old Lubitel 166 camera),
a tripod and a mobile phone as our lighting.
To try this for yourself, you need to darken a room
using blinds or dark curtains (or shoot at night and
turn all the lights out). It doesn’t need to be pitch
black; however, you want to get an exposure time
of at least five seconds, so keep making it darker if
your shutter speed is not reducing. The idea is tocreate light streaks around your subject with your
phone so you need enough time with the shutter open
to ensure you get all the way around your subject.
When it comes to pressing the shutter, a remote
shutter release is preferable; if you don’t have one,
though, just do as I did and use the self-timer on your
camera. You can also put the camera into Live View
mode to lock the mirror up – this will avoid
any camera shake and blurring of your image.
The great thing about this technique is that there
really are no limits and everything is experimental,
so no two shots will be the same. We’d love to
see your results if you give it a go!Y
1
Manual mode
Darken a room. Put
your camera into
manual mode, set the ISO to the
lowest possible setting and stop
down the aperture (try f/16).
Underexpose your shot by a few
stops to keep the blacks black.
(If your meter is reading on the
line, drop it by three stops.) Try
a shutter speed of 5-10 seconds
and focus manually on the
subject to ensure it’s pin sharp.2
Download
a colour
Next, go to your
phone and search the web for
a colour or pattern to use in the
background of the scene. Think
about how the colour image will
look when in motion. Strips can
be effective; plain colours with
a strip of white along the bottom
can be eye-catching as well. It
really can be anything, so keep
experimenting with this aspect.3
Moving light
Once you have some
images downloaded
on your phone, you’re ready to
get going. Open the shutter and
get creative! If you run the phone
around the back of your setup
you’ll get a band of light. You
can also tint your subject with
the colour by shining the phone
forward. Just keep the phone
moving so you don’t get your
hands in the shot.