Lightsaber Photography Tips (Pic Heavy)

[Master Venturous]

Thanks for the photography tips! I have an old Fujifilm bridge cam, its pretty decent though- at least its good at high speed shots (got an awesome one of a rally car with three wheels in the air lol), but never had much need to take slower shots so this will help I'm sure!
dad in law has a digi slr, so I might have to take my light saber when we visit them and break that out

Glad I could help. Maybe you could post some pics of the shots you get from it if you ever are able to capture them. Photos of Ultrasabers are always welcome.

[B1ondeange1]

Don't worry, I will be!
just as soon as my saber arrives that is! Its so painful knowing its in the same city as I am but its not here yet!

[eerockk]

My profile pic was shot at f2.8 at 1.3s. Man, I need a tripod again...

[B1ondeange1]

no tripod, and only a cheaper camera- what can be done if you keep playing around with the settings! (couldnt resist taking some pics with my brand new saber!)
i have a Fujifilm finepix s1500. these pics were taken using the 'custom' setting where i played around with the shutter speed- cant remember what it was though but it was pretty long
i really do need to get a tripod however! i was also tired and hungry so we didnt play round much more to get the background better (and with a bright moon and streetlight it was pretty bright still)





you can see the silver clash on flash working here

[Master Venturous]

Very nice shots for not having a tripod. I like the flash on clash one a lot. A tripod does help keep the background sharp and focuses all the movement on you and the saber, which makes the shots look more natural. Either way, what really counts is that you have fun taking the shots and you enjoy the experience of swinging your glow stick around like a Jedi.

[Zren Tobas]

Hey I have a Fujifilm S4250, I think its an older model, but it has the custom settings and all the other goodies. Still can't get a decent shutter speed for saber pics. I'll play around with it though. Whats a good one for like if you're just posing?

[Master Venturous]

Well it all depends on if you have a tripod. If you do, then a good Shutter Speed to use is something around 1/10 to 1/6. If you don't have a steady surface to set the camera on, then you'll have to use a faster Shutter Speed, which would be something around 1/60 or 1/30. Keep in mind all cameras are ddifferent and you may have to change those values slightly to get the shot you want. Also keep in mind that you may have to play around with your other settings (Aperture  and ISO) to balance the lighting for the Shutter Speed you use. 

[Zren Tobas]

My camera doesn't do half shutter speeds. Heh. Couldn't get that fancy of a camera. Lol. But I found some good settings to use though as you've recently seen.

[Darth Ryga]

Great shots, both Venturous and B1ondange1! I love what the different shutter speeds can help to create. 

It truly is an art 

[Zren Tobas]

Yeah my camera doesn't do like 1/30 etc. Any info would also help for like, night time and moon photography. My shutter speeds only go up to 2000 same with ISO. Would an ISO of 800 and shutter speed of 2000 help, maybe 1600 or 800 even?

[Master Venturous]

Usually with night photography, you want the lowest ISO setting you can get, which is typically 100 for most cameras. You also want a smaller Aperture, which would be something like f/11 or f/16 (smaller Aperture = bigger number) to give you a good depth of field. By using the lowest ISO possible and a fairly small Aperture size, you are greatly limiting the amount of light the camera sees and in night photography, one would think that this would result in a completely dark picture. This is where your Shutter Speed comes in. By using the lowest possible ISO setting and a fairly small Aperture (around f/11 or f/16), you are then able to use VERY long Shutter Speeds, which could be anything from 15 to 45 seconds. Some cameras also have a "BULB" feature which lets you leave the Shutter open for as long as you want, giving you any length of exposure you want. The reason for doing all of this is to get the lowest amount of noise possible in the image (lowest ISO setting), give a good depth of field and therefore a lot in focus (small Aperture), and to allow the use of very long Shutter Speeds. By using long Shutter Speeds like 30 seconds, light is being captured or exposed to the camera sensor for that entire time and is basically "painting" the image onto the camera sensor. Here is an example:


The image below is not one of mine, but I'm using it to exemplify the kind of images you can create with those settings. The settings one could use to get a shot similar to this would be ISO 100 or 200, an Aperture of anything from f/8 to f/16, and a Shutter Speed somewhere in the range of 5 to 15 seconds.





Here is one of my shots of the moon on a cloudy night. This was shot with a camera similar to the quality of yours with the settings of ISO 200, f/13 Aperture, and 0.8 second Shutter Speed.




As you can see, the moon looks very bright, so I could have dropped my ISO to 100, taken my Aperture up to f/16 or higher if possible, or both to darker the picture down a bit. Another thing to note is that with such long Shutter Speeds used for night photography, you will get a LOT of motion blur. This can be used to your advantage if you want to take light trail shots of traffic or light paintings of a saber, but for things like clouds moving across the sky or anything else you don't want to move, it should be something to consider.


Here is one more image of something called a "star trail" shot. Again this image isn't mine, but the kind of settings one might use for a shot like this would be ISO 100, Aperture around f/4 or f/5.6, and a 30 second Shutter Speed.






All in all, you do not want to use any Shutter Speed faster than around 1/2 seconds for night photography. Anything up towards 800 or more will just give you a black image because the camera Shutters will only be open for 1/800th of a second or 1/2000th of a second, which is almost no time for the camera sensor to expose the shot. In terms of Shutter Speeds, the brighter the lighting condition, the faster you want the Shutter to be (something like 1/800th) and the darker the lighting condition (like night photography), the longer you want the Shutter to stay open (something like 10 seconds). You would only want to use faster Shutter Speeds like 1/1000th+ if you were in very bright conditions, such as on a beach on a sunny day. 

Another thing to note is that if you don't have a sturdy tripod, don't even attempt night photography with long Shutter Speeds, because wind can still move your camera just enough to cause motion blur. The shot of the moon I did above is still a bit blurry because I didn't use a sturdy tripod and it was slightly windy out that night, so there was some motion blur that crept in as I was exposing the shot.

Hopefully that has served to answer your question.

[Zren Tobas]

I actually found for my camera in manual mode, ISO at 100 like you said, shutter speed at 10, and F 20.0. That worked out for me. I'm posting my result here in a sec. Or I'll just link my result here. Lol. Took me a few times to get it just right. But as you can clearly see the detail is amazing. The sky was actually still somewhat blue. Hope this is good enough for moon photography. =]

My moon result. ISO 100, shutter speed 10, F20.0:

[Master Venturous]

Looks better than anything I have ever shot of the moon. Great pic! Looks like that general settings setup worked out well for you.

[Zren Tobas]

It'll be even better once the full moon hits. =] I'll post the pictures when I do them. I just hope its not cloudy out. Lol.

[B1ondeange1]

Awesome looking moon pic zren! I have a feeling you must have a newer and possibly slightly higher model fujicam than me

I'm gonna need to get a tripod, mostly I've used my cam for higher speed shots during daylight so it wasn't as important
 On the other end of the scale zren, if it is a similar cam to mine and you are taking photos of high speed things, they should come out pretty good once you get the settings right. I've done a lot of sequence shots with my cam of my sisters dance performances and sometimes they come out amazing. My cam has also taken some sweet panoramic shots.

not to try and thread jack, but venturous, what would be the best settings to use for high speed at night/ when darker? Sometimes my sis does stage performances, which means a dark room with stage lighting. Sometimes I can fluke a decent pic, but if she's spinning or moving fast my photos usually come out pretty crummy.