Photography Tutorial

[ahenson]

Great tutorial, Andy. I will use this.

Question for Sam: I am new to Ipad. Why is it that I can see Andy's tutorial on my pc laptop, but not on my Ipad? Am I missing a setting or a plug-in that I need to discover?

The video is embedded using Flash instead of HTML5 Video, so the iPad will not play the video as it (rightly so) does not support Flash. You may be able to view it in your YouTube app instead by viewing it directly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uT6tmYqFcQ

 

[Big-Un]

I forwarded this tutorial to my photographer (takes my Santa pictures) and she absolutely fell in love with it. Thank you for starting this thread! I gave her a knife I had engraved for her to try the technique on and she did a good job, but I was looking to emphasize the engraving which she didn't do; the photo was great, but not what I was looking for. She now knows what I want and is correcting it. Ill try and post it when it is done.

Bill

 

[ahenson]

Using an iPhone for Light Painting

Okay, for those of you who have an iPhone and no professional or prosumer camera available, you can do this technique with the SlowShutter app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slow-shutter-cam/id357404131?mt=8). It takes a bit of practice, but the great thing about this app is the LIVE preview.

I used the "Light Trail" setting with Picture Quality set to 8MP; I varied the "Light Sensitivity" and "Capture Duration" throughout the experiment; 15 or 30 seconds was the best duration, and somewhere between 1/64 - 1/8 on light sensitivity worked well. The higher the second number, the longer it takes for the light to build up for proper exposure.

I spent about 2.5-3 hours experimenting with the technique — I had played around with it about 10 years ago, but only for portraits and that was with a small 5MP digital camera.

I used an solid-back table-top easel as a tripod (placed my Kindle on the easel, then the iPhone on the Kindle, lol) where the iPhone lens was "peeking" over the top of the easel, angled at around 45 degrees. An iPhone tripod is definitely something I plan to purchase now to use with this technique.

I had a small LED flashlight for the "light painting" part. To make the light the temperature I wanted (more golden, less LED blue), I used a Prismacolor marker in orange and colored directly on the flashlight's glass/plastic. I also experimented with using a translucent grocery sack as a diffuser; I colored it orange with the marker, folded the plastic several times, then placed it over the light to diffuse it — that worked very well.

The live preview allowed me to see immediately what part I had highlighted and what was still dark. I also tried this technique with a Canon 5D Mark II, which doesn't have a live preview for such a technique; the iPhone was much easier, even if the image quality is not as high. For my photo needs at home, where I am mostly using the final image for less than 1000x1000 and for web, the iPhone is sufficient.

The hardest part was getting a sharp focus. You can lock the autofocus before turning off any overhead lights, but the focus was just a little soft 1 out of 3 times until I got a feel for the focus of this app.

Here are three photos of my jewelry that I took with the app. Again, not as high quality, but I did it all with my phone — photo, editing (used Aviary), and text overlay (used Phonto). Hope that helps someone!

 

[Mike Cirelli]

Excellent information. Used to do something like that years ago with film when shooting jewelry. A long exposure of about a minute or so in complete darkness and a second or so of a shot of light would give the diamonds that flash spot. Now with digital and PS something like that is a cinch.
Thanks for the info.

 

[sam]

Fabulous photos Amanda! Studio quality shots from an iPhone no less! :clapping:

 

[ddushane]

Thanks for tutorial Andy, I'm looking forward to trying it, my photo's stink for the most part, every once in a while I'll luck out & get a good one, but not often, Thanks for the time you put into this one.

Dwayne

 

[efrain]

thank you.

I use photoshop to restore photographs, the way you use it is great. :clapping:

gracias !.

yo uso el photoshop para restaurar fotografías, la manera en que lo utilizas es magnífico. :clapping:

 

[Andy]

Great job Amanda. I have also played around with the Slow Shutter app. It was more aggravation than it was worth since I have an SLR that is better for this. But it is possible to get some great shots if you understand the ins and outs of the app as you have shown. My favorites are number two and three.

 

[mrthe]

Amanda great photos!!!! thank you to share trick of the apps in faceboob and the phos result here i have to try!

 

[ahenson]

Andy, I might try sometime to make a video tutorial for using the app for light painting. I used it again this week and it worked great — photos done in just a few minutes. I will need to experiment with flat metal pieces I've engraved at home and see how it works!

Great job Amanda. I have also played around with the Slow Shutter app. It was more aggravation than it was worth since I have an SLR that is better for this. But it is possible to get some great shots if you understand the ins and outs of the app as you have shown. My favorites are number two and three.

 

[Gemsetterchris]

Just had a quick go at this..being totally clueless & hopeless & photography :thinking:

It was fun & made an interesting result for a first go..much to improve somehow!

 

[LVVP]

Great pictures, thanks