Gallery: Fraser Canyon in Late June...

At the end of June, I went on a four day camping trip with a friend and enjoyed the gorgeous weather and beautiful scenery along the Thompson River north of Lytton, BC. I shot with my Fujifilm X-E2 kit but also had a Sony A7R system along for testing. Those photos will come in a future blog entry but there are a couple at the end of the gallery, taken on the last day. Driving back to Vancouver was the main goal that day, but I did stop near Lytton to take a few shots and only used the A7R at that stop.

In case anyone is wondering, the second shot in the gallery was light painted with a couple of green lasers and a flashlight, frantically lighting stuff up during the 30 second exposure. There was a dim flashlight switched on inside the tent as well. It took quite a few attempts before I was happy with how the tops of the grass looked with the laser illumination! For the gallery, click on the above image or...

Gallery link: Fraser Canyon in Late June

Thrunite TN32 comparison...

The trees lit by the TN32 are 400 meters away!

So I just received my new Thrunite TN32 flashlight, a sort of belated Christmas present. It is physically the largest light I own now and it also has, by far, the tightest focus and greatest throw potential of all of my flashlights. In fact, it has been reviewed and tested by others and measurements indicate it should throw a visible beam up to 950 meters. The above photo was taken in Minnekhada Park the other night, and from that same spot, I could also clearly light up trees right by the High Knoll lookout, and that is about 800 meters away, so I would say that the 950 meter estimate is pretty close... although one would need ideal conditions to achieve that - really dark, no dust or haze etc.

Flashlight Ceiling Beamshots (Take 1)

Gallery: Flashlight Beamshots (Ceiling / Take 1)

I've decided to take my experience in compressing a photograph's dynamic range and apply that to rendering flashlight beam-shots in such a way as to show all the subtle colour differences and beam artifacts. There are many subtleties to the beams produced by various flashlights and while it is relatively easy to see these differences visually when shining against a blank white wall, it is not so easy to capture on camera, at least not with a single photo. Combining the large, 'domed' LEDs with high precision, polished reflectors and anti-reflection coated lenses in modern high-end flashlights can also create colour artifacts in the beam, sometimes quite obvious and other times more subtle.

I have endeavoured to somewhat accurately portray these differences in the gallery which you can access by clicking on the above image. Not only might these beam-shots be of interest to other flashlight aficionados, those that sometimes call themselves "flashaholics", but some of the subtle patterns and coloration are also quite beautiful in their own way. I need to be careful, since with my growing collection of lights, I may be well on the way to "flashaholism" myself! A great resource, if you want to learn more about modern high-end flashlights, is CandlePowerForums.

The middle image above (and the first image in the gallery) show the collection of lights, diffusers and filters that I photographed. There are many notes following in this blog entry, describing the test conditions, which lights were photographed etc. One thing that I will stress right from the get-go is that the photos in this gallery can in no way be used to judge the relative brightness of these lights. More details follow…

[update 12/31/2013]: added one missing photo and revised the order of the gallery and descriptions slightly to make more sense.
[update 1/1/2014]: Added labels to each shot in the gallery and fixed a few minor things in the article. Happy New Year!
[update 1/6/2014]: Added in the Thrunite TN32 beam-shot and took out the laser+refracting head to keep the gallery at a clean 35 shots.

UBC: More light painting...

Through the generosity of a contact I have at the UBC Botanical Gardens, I was able to get into the gardens after hours one evening last week to do some light painting. I had plans to do an elaborate, wide area, wide angle paint of the upper gardens, the eastern most section that is right next to Thunderbird Stadium. Alas, there was a game or practice on, and all the stadium lights were lit, flooding that area with a bright orange glow. To do the elaborate light paint I had envisioned, it would have probably taken me about 5-7 minutes, maybe longer, and that would have meant a bulb exposure equally long. With the stadium lit, even a one minute long time exposure probably would have been totally washed out.

Pitt Lake: Light-painting and beam-shots...

A few weeks back, I was at Pitt Lake to do some light painting. The above was my favourite shot, the last frame of the evening, a 12 minute exposure with my Fujifilm X-E1, 14mm lens at f/4 and ISO 200. I did less than 2 minutes of light painting at the beginning of the exposure using my Sunwayman D40A light to illuminate the trees and foreground while walking along the dike just outside the frame to the right. Too bad there was haze and some high clouds since the only really clear sky was near the top right of the frame.

Light Painting at MOA with a SupBeam X40...

On Saturday night, instead of braving the crowds and photographing yet another "Celebration of Light" fireworks, like I have for many years in a row (I was tempted), I decided to do something a whole lot more peaceful and meditative. I went to the totems behind the Museum of Anthropology and did some light painting.

Well actually, it wasn't all that peaceful for me...

It turns out that I did a whole lot of running back and forth through each frame with my new handheld LED searchlight, making sure never to stop in one spot long enough for my body to register on the shot, although there are a few ghostly hints of me showing on a couple of the images. I also made sure that while painting, I was either blocking the head of the flashlight from the camera's view with my body or with objects in the scene, or simply made sure that I was never pointing the light back towards the camera. I did ruin a few attempts when I wasn't being careful enough...