Radioactive

[blonboy]

This is probably nothing new to anyone, but......its a shot I like and Im sharing how i did it.

With an extended exposure or with light painting in general its best MOST of the time to use a tripod......which i did.

I broke open a glow-stick, and put as much of the material as i could into a mason jar and then capped it. I shook up the contents to try and get the 'splash' effect. Be careful that you dont actually get too much material on the sides of the jar because it will do nothing more than just coat the sides (as you can see near the bottom of the jar). Its still neat, but it kind of diminishes the effect.

I shot this on the edge of my desk, and to setup the shot - i would position my elbows in the same place every time, and i even put little 'markers' there to remember the exact spot every time. I know that there was no way i was going to hold that jar still - (i tried) so i turned a 24-70mm lens onto its hood, and then set the jar on the end cap - it was the perfect height.

I took several snaps to make sure i had the composition right before i put the material in the jar and shut off the lights.

Camera Settings: f/2.8 @ 2s ISO 100.

The best part is the only thing i had to do was sharpen......

[OsmosisStudios]

It's a little oversharpened: i can see clear black halos around the glow blobs in the jar.

[blonboy]

Hey thanks for the feedback Osmosis... i was aiming for the smaller particles up top. I'll dial that back.

[Peach]

Oooho I love this! I'm going to have to give this a try this weekend
Where'd you get the glow sticks?

[Semjaja]

thats a really cool effect, i love playing with light in this way.

[JudiRose]

I think this is really cool. Something I would never have thought to try. That's one reason I love this forum!

[starstalker]

awesome i have some glow sticks lying around going to try this now

[starstalker]

Spent around 2 hours with this... how did you get your eyes so clearly ?
Tried a lot but couldnt seem to get that part.
Here is my result, it kinda sucks :P

Superhero Diaries - Radioactive research | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[blonboy]

Originally Posted by starstalker

Spent around 2 hours with this... how did you get your eyes so clearly ?
Tried a lot but couldnt seem to get that part.
Here is my result, it kinda sucks :P

Superhero Diaries - Radioactive research | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Actually starstalker - i think you did a GREAT job...... yeah, its tough let me tell you. I had at least 20 shots before i found a good one. Here's the deal - stationary objects are obviously not going to move so shutter speed there isnt a big deal - but when you try to put a human element in there (such as yourself) you gotta know you wont stay still for very long - at least i didnt. that one shot was the ONLY one where i was still enough to get a fairly sharp image. So.... given that - you'll have to set your shutter speed to be fairly quick. Mine was 2 seconds. The flip side of that now is that you'll require a very large aperture - and thus you'll obviously create a very shallow depth of field.

To achieve my results - i made sure that i knew exactly where my focal plane was (about the front or side of the jar and i made sure that i got very close to it. Given this, if i looked directly at the jar (as the effect was setup to look like) i would be looking almost sideways. So to compensate, i had to practice looking actually PAST the jar.

So ultimately, i was close to the jar - i was roughly even with the focal plane and i actually looked past the jar (somewhere between the jar and where the camera was). I used a relatively fast shutter speed and tried to stay as still as possible. I hope this helps, and again - your results are way cool!

[starstalker]

aah i took around 30 images before i finalized on this one.

Problem is i was exposing around 50-60 seconds so that it would light up my face.
Should have done a small exposure and increased the exposure in camera raw i guess