Susan Magnano's Light Painting Gear, From Cameras to Lights!

Hi my name is Susan Magnano and I'm a photographer and light painter and today we're going to talk about the gear you can use when you're light painting. So first we're going to start off with talking about camera equipment and you don't need any fancy camera equipment. You can use a mirrorless, a DSLR and even some smartphones do long exposures. But today I'm going to be using the Olympus OM-1 camera and the reason why I'm using this camera is because they have a really unique feature. It is called Live Composite and what's really cool about it is it allows you to do bulb mode and not overexpose the ambient light. And I know this seems like some kind of voodoo magic but it's actually really cool. The way Live Composite works is that you actually have to hit the trigger three different times. The first time is actually to get the base exposure to capture the ambient light and that can be from a 0.5 second exposure to a 60 second exposure. The next time you hit the trigger it starts the Live Composite and what's happening there is that the camera is taking picture after picture after picture and composing them together and what is happening is the only light that's being added is new light to the sensor. So that's why this is so awesome for light painting. It's because you can never overexpose the background. If your base exposure was properly exposed the only light being seen in the picture now is added light. The next time you hit the trigger actually ends the composite. It does a little bit of noise reduction and then you can actually see the picture and it's complete. It's all in camera and it's like pure magic. The other reason why I love this feature is because you can see it happening in real time. You can look at the back of your screen, see the light painting happening and then go back and adjust. You can add more light painting to your frame before your exposure is done. That's like incredible. So this is why I love Olympus and their new Live Comp feature. Moving on. I typically shoot with wide-angle lenses. On this camera here I have a 7-14 which is a 14-28 equivalent and I also have a 24-70 equivalent that I use often as well. Let's jump into tripods. So when you're doing any type of night photography you need a good tripod and I use Benro tripods. I use two different kinds. I use this slim tripod because it's easy to bring around with me. It weighs like a little bit over two pounds and I carry it around the city or anywhere I think I might be doing some light painting and it's just portable and it's sturdy. But when I know that I'm going to be doing really long exposures like whether it's including some astronauts in my photography, I include this advanced Benro tripod because it's more heavy duty. If it's windy I know it won't move. Another handy tripod to have is this little guy. This is another Benro tripod and it's useful for so many things. I typically do little time lapses with my iPhone to capture my light paintings being happening so I can share them on social media. So this is really easy to carry around and portable and I also use it as a light stand. Speaking of iPhones, I bring my iPhone on all my shoots because I use it as a scouting tool. I open up PhotoPills. I see where the stars are going to be and I also use it for composition. I walk around kind of composing my shot and then I break out my camera. So these are really really handy tools. So next we're going to be talking about my camera waste bag and I think it's super helpful because I have a place to put my flashlights and my flashes and it's you know it's just right here. It's like a little fanny pack but cooler than a fanny pack. Nobody likes fanny packs but like I can put my flashes in it. I can put my triggers in it. I can put my cell phone in it and then everything's with me and this is just in case I don't have pockets because sometimes things are falling out of my pockets and I really recommend having something like this just so it makes you not place your items on the ground and lose them in the dark. So we talked about camera gear and now let's move into lighting equipment. So the first thing I think we all have are flashlights. You may just have a cheap one that you have in the garage which I recommend just using whatever you have to get started but flashlights are the one thing that I do recommend investing some money in. Something that can have a lot of different brightnesses like 20 to 1000 lumen and I think it's really important to get a 1000 lumen flashlight because if you're shooting in dark environments or actually bright environments you're going to need a brighter flashlight to be seen. So B&H sells a lot of great flashlights. As you can see I have a variety of one. You'll be wondering why do they have these tails and this is really important when you're doing light painting because it's a trigger that as long as you're pressing down these little tails the flashlight stays on and then you can release it. It's much easier than triggering the button holding the button and turning it on and off. It's just kind of a trigger a finger trigger. So now we have our flashlights let's move on to DIY tools you have right now because my biggest goal is for you guys to get out and light paint tonight. Why wait? So one thing that I know you have in your kitchen is some parchment paper and all you need to do is roll it up and you have this tube and if you grab one of your flashlights you have an instant light wand and you can do any type of light designs with it and it's just really fun and simple and you have it so no excuses. Another interesting tool that you have already is empty water bottles or empty sprite bottles. I like sprite bottles because there's this cool green color and all you need is a piece of tape. I prefer gaffer's tape, an empty bottle and a flashlight. Oops make sure it's empty and here we go look at this really cool tool. I may have some sprite on my hands but no biggie but I just want you to see that you have these items already in your house. A couple other things Christmas lights are really cool you can just shake them around we're talking about light design here let's get creative. These ones are little cactuses which are even more fun and green and you guys all must be familiar with this. This is a glow stick you may be channeling your childhood but you can still buy these you crack them open and then you can do some cool light designs. And lastly some camping equipment you can kind of get this at the camping store or Walmart. You use these typically as lanterns that light up your campsite turn it on and then just start doing some light painting. So this is all just to get creative to get your mind thinking what can I do what do I have already around the house. The dollar store is great for this you can go to the dollar store and pick up anything that lights up. Kids toys are not for kids they're for light paintings. So now that you have your DIY tools let's get serious. I want to talk about doing some low-level lighting and what that means is we're going to be leaving these light sources on when we're doing landscapes. So if we're doing a landscape or lighting up a structure we don't want to be doing any kind of light design where we're doing our lights in front of the camera. This is for when we're actually putting our light sources behind the camera or really to the side of the camera to illuminate our subjects. And I use this Luxley Fiddle a lot. The reason for that is it has so many different brightnesses even down to one percent and below if you use their app. It's so helpful because a lot of light sources are too bright. I know that seems crazy but when you're doing low-level lighting and you're shooting astro and you're lighting up a cool barn that we may be doing later this week you need it to be dim. And I typically shoot between one percent and ten percent with this thing. And it also changes to a variety of different colors. It has the RGB spectrum and it's just so fun. So check out the Luxley Fiddle. It's awesome and great for low-level lighting. Nanlite. This is a pavo tube. Also super helpful. It does the same thing that the fiddle does. It changes colors. It even has cool different effects. Something I like to do called the hue loop which changes a whole bunch of different colors and does rainbow patterns. So I use this one often to do similar kind of light painting effects. So those are kind of my constant light sources. Let's get a little bit more crazy. Let's talk about strobes. And I really don't use too many strobes except for a speed light. This is a regular old speed light. It's a godox one. You don't need to get too fancy. I use it in a really interesting way. I hand hold this. So I run around my models and I strobe them. And I basically will power the flash to the brightness I want. I typically start at 1.8 power. I have it in a manual mode so I can power it up and down. And then all I do is I hit this red button and I trigger it on them. And sometimes I'll put a grid on this if I want to narrow the beam. And then I'll trigger it behind them and create a nice rim light. It's just such a great tool to have. And really it's like equally as important as having a flashlight. With these two tools you can do anything. Next we're moving on to our light design tools. And these are my favorite. These are the most fun. These are when you're going to kind of go out and get really creative with light painting in front of the camera. We have these awesome tubes. These are tubes from Eric Perret and Kim Henry. They are the founders of a light painting technique called tube light painting. And what's really cool about it is it's this T8 tube. That's what this is. The letter T. The number 8. You can buy them at the hardware store. These tubes are typically used for protecting fluorescent lights. And that's why they're at hardware stores. They're at on Amazon. Look them up. They're like three or four dollars. And then you can put your own gels inside of them. So Kim and Eric who founded this kind of type of photography now sell tubes. And this is one of theirs. It is a holographic tool. It does really cool things. I recommend checking them out at lightpainting.store. I've made my own like this cool rainbow one that looks so awesome. And I just like to experiment with these tubes because there's so many light patterns you can create with them. And they're long and you can do all sorts of things which you're going to learn about in our next episode when I talk about techniques. I think that Nanlite wanted to get in on the action and they created this tube also called the T8 tube that's LED driven that is inspired for light painters. So check it out as well. I just got mine and I can't wait to experiment with it. Another cool light painting tool to design with is a light blade. And this one I made on my own is basically a piece of plexiglass with a piece of hardware that I got at the hardware store. I think it may be a plumbing bit. And you kind of created a little gap. You put this in. You glued it together. And now I have this light blade. And what happens is I use this adapter. This is from a company called lightpaintingbrushes.com. I'm going to go over their stuff next. But they have this thing it's called a universal adapter. It fits on all these kind of size plumbing tools but also on all their tools as well. And it fits any flashlight. So if I look at it I can fit the flashlight. I can fit my blade and then I have it as one piece. Because if not then I would just have to tape a flashlight on here and it's not as sturdy. But these universal adapters like I mean just reach out to lightpaintingbrushes.com and get these because they are awesome for making your own homemade tools. So let's talk about lightpaintingbrushes.com. They have really cool things. They have an amazing deluxe starter kit that I think has everything you need. It has a collapsible wand which is great for traveling. It has this black fiber optic brush which is how I create my fire. If you're ever curious about how I'm creating that fire it's basically this black fiber optic with a red gel and this universal adapter. I put it together and it is like magic. And I put my little flashlight in it and I shake it around. They even have their own set of light blades and so much more. You should check them out. Probably my funnest item to light paint with is this hula hoop. This is an LED hula hoop and it creates so many fun patterns. It glows different colors and what I'm trying to just share is you can do anything with anything that lights up. So go out and find some glow things whether it's at the carnival and it's like a glow sword. I mean we're all kids at heart and that's what I'm trying to do here is inspire you to feel the creativity you used to feel as a kid like when you used to draw with crayons. This is just like drawing with light and basically you can use anything that lights up. You know you could use your flashlight, your phone. I didn't even mention that. Your phone is the most basic tool. Turn a really cool color on your phone and you could just light paint like this. So you already have a lot of tools you need to light paint. You just need to go find a dark environment and create. Now that we have reviewed what is light painting, how to scout for the perfect location, and what gear to bring, I think we're finally ready to go out and shoot. We're going to head to the Catskills so we can do some low-level lighting and some light designing in a dark environment. I think this will be a great beginning spot for us to get started and then we're going to move to a more challenging location like New York City where we're going to have the city lights behind us and we're going to even do some light painting portraits. If you want to learn how to do this in person, check out my link below for FotorAdventures.com where we do awesome adventures into the darkness and also download my light painting photography guide which is a great companion to what you're going to be learning in this series. This is going to be an awesome, awesome week so join us on this light painting series.