The Night Rider

How to make the Night Rider - As promised on Flickr

All you need is:
a long exposure camera
tripod
torch / flashlight
a dark night and a friend.

Setup your tripod and get your friend to stand in position. Set your camera to a 30 second exposure time. This will give you enough time to draw your Night Rider.



Hit the capture button on the camera and run behind your friend. (you may want to use the timer function here to give you plenty of time to prepare)



Once you're in position behind your friend, place the torch by their right foot and turn it on. Now you simply run the torch round their body making sure you keep a nice even speed and don't obstruct the torch with any loose clothing.

If you find you've completed you're outline before you hear the camera shutter, you can always add a little trail or you can simply turn off the torch when you have finished.

Spinning Light Discs

 

These images are all thanks to my phone. I came across an app which enables you to set you're screen flashing at different rates and colours. By adjusting the colour and flash rate settings I was able to get some interesting pics in different colour themes and even slightly different shapes.

 

Anyone can make these. You will need: a Symbian based mobile phone, or any other flashing object, a record player and a camera with long exposure capabilities. 

Simply setup you're equipment in a dark room, put the phone on the turntable and set the record player going. Use long exposure to capture awesome spinning light discs!

 

This one on the left was made by putting the camera on the record player and standing the phone up-right across the room.

The one on the right used the same method as above but with very long exposure, fast colour change speed and high flash rate.

Have a go!

The Camera

Let me introduce the Nikon D3100...


Well I'm sure most of you all ready know about this one. I didn't have a lot of money to spend and even though I was looking to buy second-hand, my money wasn't going to buy much. I wanted a Nikon or a Canon but the Nikon came along first. It basically fell into my lap through a friend of a friend of a friend. It was a good price and It was in mint condition with its box and all accessories.

This is my first DSLR and I'm rather pleased with it. Most of the time I shoot in super fine Jpeg and the 4gb memory card, I got thrown in, is perfectly adequate for my needs. Battery life could be a bit better but Its certainly not a weakness. Only thing I'm not too impressed with is the auto focus in dark situations but switching to manual focus is quick and easy, plus the ability to zoom in on the live-view mode is also handy for manual focusing.

The video recording is a little bit of a let down as I can only seem to record 10 minute clips but that's not a massive problem. I haven't played with the video settings a great deal but I cant seem to enable continuous auto-focus in video mode?

I'm using a fairly high-end NEC monitor and there is little to no difference between raw and jpeg modes. I currently tweak none of my images so there is no need for me to shoot in raw. With jpeg I can hold more images and increase battery life.

I would happily recommend the Nikon but I can feel myself wanting to upgrade already. Maybe some new lenses will prove to be a good upgrade? Any advice on what to get would be much appreciated.

Spec     Sample Shots     Technology

Flickr

This is predominantly a photo-blog right?

Yes it is and BrokenDrift is also on Flickr. The Flickr page will be updated most often but the BrokenDrift Blog will have more photos with greater detail about where I took them and how.

If you have arrived at this Blog through Flickr I thank you for taking such an interest in the BrokenDrift Project. If not, then get over to Flickr and checkout all the pics!

Photos on Flickr will generally be uploaded in sets of three. If I have a lot from one location I will upload more but always in groups of three.

Please show you're support on Flickr, all you're favs and comments wont go unnoticed. If you look at my page, Ill look at yours. I always return the favor, for what goes around comes around.

Lastly, you will notice I don't watermark any of my photos. I want you to see the image as I took it but please refrain from copying images and claiming them as you're own.

Add me on Flickr so I no longer stand alone.