Aquila Online

Aquila pronounced AK-weh-lah, uh-KWILL-uh or even a-kee-laa, means eagle in Latin. Just like the eagle, this blog is my “bird’s eye view” on situations or topics that I happen to come across in my life.

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Writing With A Flashlight

// April 5th, 2006 // Photos // 2,793 views

I saw this technique on flickr once and haven’t really had a chance to play around with it much, partly because I didn’t really have the right camera. So following a combination of boredom and the fact that I was taking pictures around the house, the opportunity presented itself to play around a bit.

Basically you need a camera with manual settings, a tripod, a really dark room, a flashlight and to make things a little easier you’d also need a mirror. Change your camera settings to manual and set the exposure time to around 15 seconds (you’ll need time). I used an FNumber of 3.5 and ISO of 100.

First you play around a bit with random movements with the flashlight pointing towards the camera, so that it picks up the movement of the light source.

Next, try to make shapes such as a heart. This is where the mirror comes in handy, since you would need to ‘mirror’ your movements to the camera so not to produce a flipped image. Thus, shining the light into the mirror will result in an inverted reflection back towards the camera – genius eh?

After a while, play around with something more complex, such as writing words. I found that cursive text is the easiest to begin with. Block letters take a very long time to do.

Just to show you all that I didn’t copy this from somewhere else, writing the name of this blog Aquila Online, proved to be relatively easy. (I ran out of time to dot the i’s though)

Then, the tricky part was to draw something that was not ‘connected’ as such, like a smiley face (of sorts).

Clearly I had too much time on my hands and looking at the text I wrote, it just reaffirmed that my handwriting really sucks.

Technorati Tags: Light Writing

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12 Responses to “Writing With A Flashlight”

1. Rikki says:

   2006/04/06 at 03:38

   you could move the camera and keep the torch still… bit harder
2. Daedalus says:

   2006/04/06 at 09:42

   Bwhahahaha!!

   101 things to do after *sex*
3. tripeak says:

   2006/04/06 at 12:47

   Flickr is really the best photo site – EVER… the stuff I’ve found on it just blows my mind! Have you seen the camera toss stuff… OMG!! Theres tons more to point you to… if u dont discover it by yourself
4. Billy says:

   2006/04/06 at 13:56

   Cool!

   This could be a long wekend! Imagine trying it hammered?
5. Jinja Ninja says:

   2006/04/06 at 19:23

   haha! Nice one man.
6. Jam says:

   2006/04/07 at 09:44

   Very creative Aquila.
   And what fun, playing with yourself in the dark.
7. Daedalus says:

   2006/04/07 at 10:01

   Haha Jam – A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.
8. Aquila says:

   2006/04/07 at 11:16

   haha Jam, indeed it was fun. interested in becoming my next subject?

   Rikki and Tripeak, will try that out next time, but I must admit, some of my other night shots look pretty much like that. all the camera shake you see.

   On that note, Billy, you have to see the pictures from my last birthday party. I was slightly off kilter and the effects weren’t exactly print quality. Daedalus, can you remember anything from that night?
9. Daedalus says:

   2006/04/07 at 13:14

   Bwhahahaha…
10. Marco Valente says:

    2006/04/08 at 22:57

    Thats quite fascinating, although i soppose the use of digital cameras would not let you do these effects.
11. Aquila says:

    2006/04/09 at 16:46

    Err Marco, I actually used a digital camera. Thing is, with digital it’s actually easier, since you can check back immediately to see how the shot turned out and to it again (which I had to do a few times).

    My hat goes off to the people who do this with film cameras.