The Best Flashlights for Light Painting Photography 2024 article is now available on my website. This buying guide reviews the best flashlights, torches, cube lights, LED panel lights, and headlamps for light painting, night, urbex, astro, and low level landscape lighting photography. Now in its 8th year, this buying guide is the most trusted source of information on flashlights for light painting photographers and the only buying guide that covers a wide range of light painting systems. This article will also be updated throughout 2024 when suitable new lights are released.
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Great info on your site!
Also some really terrific images.
I used to try this back in the film days. We’ve (well you have) come a long way 
All the Best,
Jeff
Thank you. It is much easier with digital cameras as it is possible to make multiple attempts and refine the technique after each photo.
Curious why a photographer would use flashlights instead of photography lights. Does not seem to be the right tool for the job but please, educate me. Always interesting in learning.
Light painting is a special type of photography, where people either partially illuminate objects or draw figures in the air by moving with a light source in front of a long-exposure-time camera. So ideally you need multiple colors, absolutely no PWM/flicker and it must be portable enough for you to draw extended and complicated shapes.
Brightness is not really needed too much, as a modern camera on long exposure is very sensitive already.
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I’m not stephenk - captain obvious here - bright portable - directional photo lights are not as easy to come by as a flashlight. Or at least they were.
Doing it with a strobe is possible. Nat Geo used to have some that did that to good effect. Multiple pops to light things and highlight certain areas.
Cavers use multiple pops at different locations to light up larger passages and rooms.
With a flashlight one can “paint” areas to create drama.
Some of the pics on his site show this well.
All the Best,
Jeff
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Interesting that the Ants on a Melon light supports firmware updates via USB! That would seem to be a lot more accessible for most users than using a custom adapter with flashing pads.
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That Ants light is calling my name. I have no use for it whatsoever.
All the Best,
Jeff
The answer to your question is in the linked article
Light painting is the intentional addition of light during a long exposure photo. There are two main genres of light painting 1) light drawing/creating light trails, 2) illuminating things.
For (1) creating light trails - there are many light painting systems (Light Painting Brushes being the most well known) which allow a range of flashlights to be connected to a range of different light painting tools (e.g. tubes, fiber optic cables, fiber optic brushes, light blades) via an adapter, which can then be used to create light trails. Lights with a “general purpose” beam profile are optimal for this. This allows for huge flexibility in creativity. Whilst there are plenty of non-flashlight options as well such as LED tubes, calligraphy lights, light pens, etc they are all very specialised and specific to a task. Non-flashlight options for creating light trails are covered in one of my other articles.
(2) Illuminating things - the best tool for job will depend on beam profile, and whether the illumination is static or moving. For near field use, LED panels, cube lights, and flashlights with diffusers work well. The latter option is better if the light source is in the photo. These are all covered in the article. For high brightness requirements, medium, or long range range illumination flashlights are the best choice as battery powered LED panel lights are not bright enough in terms of lumens or lux/cd. Some light painters might use a battery powered flash unit during a long exposure to light things up, sometimes using multiple pops of lights.
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I was a beta tester for their V2 firmware and having USB makes life very easy to install firmware updates. Ants On A Melon have very impressive R&D. I’m surprised more manufacturers have not gone down this path for firmware and/or configuration purposes.
I’m only aware of Knog (most of their lights) and Nextorch (one light) that have USB configuration.
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I have just published a mid-2024 update to this article. Same link as per the original post.
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