How To Draw With Light
You’ve probably seen a picture like the one above before. Some people call it light graffiti, you may call it; drawing with light or light painting. Light drawing is extremely fun for anyone. All you need is some patience. In order to draw with light you will need the following:
1 . A DSLR Camera
2 . Some source of handheld light (flashlight, keychain light, etc.)
3 . A dark area
4 . A Tripod
5 . Patience.
You can make light drawings by yourself or with a friend. In order to draw with light you will need to set your camera into Manual Mode (M) and then set your lens to the widest aperture possible (for most lenses that will be F/3.5 when zoomed out). After you have done that set your ISO to the lowest possible setting (for most cameras that will be 200) then set your camera up on a tripod and select a shutter speed between 5-30 seconds. Once you hear the shutter click, step in front of the camera, turn on one (or multiple) of your light sources and “draw”. After a few tries you should be able to draw what you want. If you don’t have enough time to draw your image get someone to hold the shutter button down and put the shutter speed to “Bulb”.
The widest possible aperture isn’t always ideal if you want to kill all ambient light, the aperture can be changed as needed and isn’t always set to the smallest setting. This also gives you a lot less room for error in terms of where your focal plane is(what’s in focus), I have light painted before and had my aperture as high as f16. The light source will determine the aperture as to get a good exposure.
Also be careful of saying ISO 200 is the default(assuming you are a Nikonian), Canons varies and in alot of the consumer/prosumer bodies the “native ISO” is ISO 100. The lower the ISO the better to reduce image noise.