Savage RGB Light Painter Pro LED Wand

[Mack]

So I bought one of those Savage LED Paint Wands to play with using the Olympus "Live Composite" mode.

Wand here: https://www.amazon.com/Savage-RGB-Light-Painter-Pro/dp/B07KJPHHB7

Ran into an issue with the exposure though. Seems using three Godox TT685-O speedlights all set to full power and getting correct exposure on the subject at about a five foot distance, the LED wand would overexpose in areas of colors to a white, more so in areas where it would overlap in the photos and blue or yellow would become white.

I had to cut the LED wand down in brightness, but you cannot do it if you use the auto-changing color mode with its (free) app on the phone playing to music. With no app and just the wand, you can dial it down a bit in brightness, but with the app and music or its auto color changing, it is preset.

Did a couple of things. One was to use a 3-stop ND filter on the lens to bring the f/stop down to around f/8 with ISO 200 so I had a workable exposure range for the flash at full power. Second was I had to also bring down the wand's brightness too using a Lee #211 3-stop ND filter (~$6) cut down to 6"x17" and wrapped around the wand and taped. I left the camera in Daylight mode for the test.

Option might be to use some stronger studio light units too and avoid the gel on the wand. Might need to lower the ISO if you can as well in Composite Mode by doing that.
Fun toy to play with though!

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[LilSebastian]

Maybe expand on your post and it could become a full fledged Review. Added bonus of getting on the short list for @barry13 to giveaway a sweet Think Tank item.

 

[thenextpage]

Have you watched Joe Edelman’s YouTube channel? He’s an Olympus visionary and done videos on this technique; light painting with a wand using live composite. He does a lice q&a session every Wednesday called togchat; so you could get his insight too.

 

[Mack]

Maybe expand on your post and it could become a full fledged Review. Added bonus of getting on the short list for @barry13 to giveaway a sweet Think Tank item.

Thanks, but I don't know anything about that. Just trying to get it to work to my satisfaction with the three TT685-O speedlights and its own LED lights.

Have you watched Joe Edelman’s YouTube channel? He’s an Olympus visionary and done videos on this technique; light painting with a wand using live composite. He does a lice q&a session every Wednesday called togchat; so you could get his insight too.

Yes, I saw that one where he was demoing the E-M1X and he did something with a normal LED want at the end. When I shopped the LED wand, I saw the "Paint" one and went for it as it wasn't that much more (~$159).

I tried a Lee #210 gel on the wand to brighten up the colors as it is a 2-stop ND filter last night. It did brighten the colors, but it also washed them out in places where they might blend together, especially the reds.

I was stopped down to f/8 and should have been f/6.3 (i.e. 2/3 stop more given my reading on the Colorchecker, but its corrected below. It wasn't quite so dark outdoors so I used f/8 and should have waited an hour after sunset and set it at f/6.3.). The Lee #211 3-stop ND would be brighter than the three at the top too by opening it up more, but would not be as washed out as the one below which is 2-stops ND on the wand. Flash meter was telling me f/5.6 with the 3-stop ND covering the lens too but it appeared washed out on the HDMI monitor tethered to the E-M1X so I could see what I was doing, so I went with f/8.

I guess when I use this on real job I'll use the #211 3-stop ND gel as it's less likely to wash out and bleed the colors when used with speedlights.

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