Making a light tube painting is a wonderful process. It's much more than pressing the shutter button. You have to make an effort to make the coloring page perfect.
And as far as I'm concerned, you don't have to color within the lines with light painting photography. You set the rules yourself.
However, there are a number of things that can go wrong or have a negative impact on the end result.
Let's take a look at these one by one:
1. Do not intentionally rotate the tube on its axis
If you look at the Rainbow and the Nordic series tubes, you will see that the foils used are rich in color. If you slowly rotate the tubes around its axis, you will see more and more colors appear.
That is why it is good to rotate the tube with a small wrist movement during your painting in order to create multiple colors in different places in your painting.
This way you get a drawing that is rich in color.
2. Rotate the tube too much
Most light tubes are half lined on the inside with color foil. The other side is therefore the transparent side. The light from the flashlight or light source passes through the tube, hits the foil and the colors of the foil shine through the transparent side to the camera.
With error 1, we learned that rotating around the axis is good, but in our enthusiasm we sometimes rotate too far and a large part of the painting does not point to the camera with the transparent side, but with the back of the foil. And it lets in far too little light, so that the drawing is not or hardly visible.
So while a little twisting is very good for your painting, make sure you don't twist too much and that the transparent side of the tube always points towards the camera.
3. Movements that are too fast
While making the light tube painting we often feel the time pressure and therefore automatically move faster. But the light from the tube takes time to 'burn in' on our camera sensor. That's why I always count. If I have a shutter speed of 15 seconds, I consciously count, so I always know how much time I have left, and that gives me the peace I need to make a beautiful drawing.
Are you curious what you can make? Take a quick look at all the colors of the light tube: Click here for the shop