Hi everyone. I am an amauter photographer and lately I’ve been requested to photograph some local concerts at my city. The image linked above is one of my many inspirations, and I am very curious about this light trail technique. Is it done right at the time, is it edited later? How? If someone could help me, I’d be very thankful. :)
I would strongly suggest not using this photo as too deep an inspiration.
The light trail effect is cool and all but it’s also massively overused. By all means figure out how to do it, and if the venue is ok with flash, take a few like that, but if you spend the whole set trying to get light-trail photos and nothing else, it’s gonna be pretty lame.
Check the “Shutter Drag” technique
Shutter drag, rear curtain flash sync.
Single shot, dragged-shutter Second-curtain (rear curtain) sync flash on-camera, rotated on axis.
Set your camera’s rear curtain synch so that it fires the flash at the end of the exposure, then set your shutter speed slow like 1/10 or slower (up to a second or two)
Push the shutter release while rotating the camera, and it will fire the flash at the end.
This will combine bright light streaks and a clear picture of your subject.
20+ year concert shooter here. Sometimes you just have to use flash. Shitty dark punk rock venue with some random Home Depot lights? Flash. Esp with punk rock and awesome slow shutter effects. Performance during event with flat lighting with flash allowed in the venue? Flash. Most other gigs? No flash. It’s a tool, horses for courses.
Tbh - way better to know how to use a flash effectively in all occasions and not needing it is better than having no clue/inflexible values (“it’s not true to the ART!!!”) and having to turn in useable shots at the end of the show.
Flash n spin+ longer exposure
It’s called light painting. Go on YouTube and search for it and you will find all that you need
shutter drag, slow shutter speed with flash, took the pic with the flash then moved the camera while the shutter was open to get the moving lights
Shutter drag.
It’s called “Dragging the shutter.” I use flash set to the first curtain, shitter to about 1 sec - take the photo and move the camera.
Nice job, I always take longer on the shitter.
Get permission from the artist and venue before using a flash. The majority of shows I do not allow flash.
Yeh I have been trying to figure how to do this without using flash, tried with a double exposure but it’s fiddly
Best thing you can try to get creative without using your own lighting is some prism filters to get stuff like this
Slow shutter speed + flash
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play around with anywhere from 1/30 to 1/60 shutter speed
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I would go to a higher aperture, maybe 2.8 up to 5.6, but again, play around before the shoot
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You can do it with an in-body flash but a hotshoe flash will give better results
This thread is full of technical answers on curtain sync, and I would generally put those comments on the back burner until you’re comfortable with the basics of what’s happening here. This image is achievable on any camera that allows manual shutter speed and a flash.
You’re slowing the shutter speed to blur the lights and shooting the flash to freeze the initial subject.
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It’s called light painting. Slow shutter speed while someone moves around with a light. There are a ton of tutorials for that online, too, depending on what exactly you wanna do
Definitely go check out r/lightpainting it’s pretty rad shit.
It’s a combination of very wide-angle lens (therefore deep Depth-of-field), slow shutter, off-camera flash. Also probably high ISO. Focus was most probably set manually with high f/stop. The post with the original image talks about using a fish-eye lens. Definitely not amateur equipment (or skill).
Your problem in photographing in dark venues is knowing how to set your focus, because the camera’s autofocus won’t have enough light to work correctly. Then you’ll need to know how to set the flash power so that it’s bright enough to give sufficient light without blowing out the foreground, and that will likely require off-camera flash at a sufficient distance to evenly light the sunject of interest.
Your camera’s pop-up flash won’t have enough power or distance to do this. Plus this image was not taken with a “normal” lens.
