The first such light painting tool appeared a few years ago and in January 2010, pioneering work by Mike Ross (TxPilot on Flickr) used the open source Arduino platform to send the instructions to the LEDs. With the right set of instructions, the LEDs can be used to mimic the pixels of a bitmapped image, so as the Pixelstick is moved through space, the LEDs effectively ‘draw’ the bitmap in midair and can be captured during a long exposure photograph.Īs a concept, this is not new.

This means each LED can produce almost any colour, and each one can be instructed to flash on and off at a particular speed and colour sequence. Now it is a real product, and is one of very few commercially available dedicated light painting tools.įor those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Pixelstick is an array of 200 addressable RGB LEDs. It seemed that almost as soon as they’d set up the kickstarter for the Pixelstick, it had exceeded it’s required target and was set to become a real product. I’m not sure how well kickstarter projects usually do, but Bitbanger Labs must have been pretty pleased with how their second one turned out. So by writing this, I’m doing nothing more than calling it how I see it. I want to share my thoughts with others who take the artform seriously, and are not simply looking for a ‘magic bullet’ style device to turn them into spectacularly competent light painters overnight. I have no axe to grind, nor am I an evangelist for fancy tools, but I am passionate about light painting. Ian was kind enough to put The Pixelstick through its paces and write an in depth, honest and impartial review to let us all know if its worth the $325.00, check it out below. The Pixelstick is that light painting tool that looks a lot like Michael Ross’s Digital Light Wand created around 2010, huh hummmm… The Pixelstick received mass exposure and raised nearly 6 times its Kickstarter funding goal, a total of $628,417.00 to go into production! That was in December of 2013, well just about a month ago veteran Light Painter Ian Hobson got a hold of one of the first production models. Unless you have been living under a rock or in a comma for the last year you have probably heard of the light painting tool called The PixelStick.

Night Photography: Finding Your Way In The Dark.

Camera Rotation Light Painting Tutorial.

Light Painting Workshop by Patrick Rochon.

Fire Tutorials by Van Elder Photography.

Pixelstick patterns