Playing with Colors

So I wasn't planning on doing a BLOG on this but it was quite the journey so here goes...

I got a new toy.

Grabbed the BtS shots at the last second when it occurred to me to do  BLOG... ugh - should have done a VLOG!

A  Light Tube - specifically a $45 LUXCEO RGB "Portable Wand"... I had been looking at various ones for a while and they were just honestly expensive for what I saw their usefulness as. Jump to Christmas and I have a $50 Amazon gift card - and I happen to see a YouTube video reviewing this little $45 Light Tube... so I bought one...

I know - SHOCKER!

Okay, so enough on my G.A.S. psychology... let's get on to the toy!

So I decide I need to do the one thing that a Light Tube seems to be born to do... Swing around during a nice long shutter drag to create patterns.

Let's start with The Setup:

Monster on Plexi Platform held up by two boxes...

LED wearing FESNEL modifier off to camera left...

Light Tube behind Plexi - and it gets swung around back there sometimes up and down and sometimes pivoted from a center point...

Small panel light wearing a grid off to camera left but REALLY close to monster to add a little fill...

Camera on TriPod and Remote Trigger activated - wearing a series of ND Filters -One 8 Stop ND, One 4 Stop ND, and one Graduated 4 Stop ND (I'll get to the details on that shortly) ... 

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The basic setup in the photo above explains pretty much everything from an equipment and setup perspective...

BUT...

Then came the Light Tube - I tried dragging from above to below but I REALLY liked it once I tried planting it dead center and pivoting it from one side to the other...

I started with the 8 and 4 Stop NDs stacked (and about a 4 second exposure) - all good on basic exposure and the light tube looked cool in the final exposure EXCEPT the bottom/center pivot point (from bottom to about 1/4 of the way up) was always blown out because it was effectively exposed the entire time...

The trick I needed to work out was the ND filters - This led to the addition of the 4 Stop GRADUATED ND...... once I got that worked out I just used trial and error to work out the brightness of the LED/Fresnel...

I inserted the Graduated ND in front of the other two with the 4 STOP ND part a the bottom (to add extra ND to the lower area) and the CLEAR part at the top (so no extra ND there where the Light Tube was moving at all times)...

Viola! Success...

But still not awesome...

Then I adjusted settings to make for the same overall exposure with an 8 and 15 Second shutter to allow for a slower Tube Rotation...

Below are some of the various results and overall I'm pleased with the lessons I learned in this little exercise...

THEN I was happy! ;)

For those curious, on my Pentax K1Mii waring a Sigma 28-70 pushed into 70mm I shot the first photo at f11, ISO100, and 8 Seconds. Earlier and Later shots were 4-15 Seconds with the F-stop cranked to compensate.

THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT GOING TO BLOW YOUR SOCKS OFF...

THEY WERE JUST EXPERIMENTS FOR THE SAKE OF THE LIGHT TUBE...

BUT THEY WERE A WHOLE LOT OF FUN!!!

K1M25748

K1M25721

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