Laser Pointer, a Light-painting Tool Part 2

Last week I got myself a new light-painting tool. I bought a green laser pointer for S$52 as a set in which it comes with a free AAA size battery and a diopter lens adaptor. The diopter lens adaptor is this smudgy opaque lens that distorts the laser beam and creates some wonderful effects when fix onto the laser pointer beam head. Jump right in to see some of the results.

"Scott, beam me in!"

The green laser pointer has an output power of 5mW, which can be considered high to me as the light beam is very bright and glaring. So it's not advisable to stare at the beam (pointed on a surface) for a prolonged time. It can really hurt your eyes. Compare to the red laser pointer which I own, its output power is estimated 1mW.

With the diopter lens adaptor fit onto the beam head, it diffracts the laser light beam from one  into hundreds of lights dots, scattering evenly across any surface, like twinkling stars/constellations effect as shown below. The greater the distance the laser pointer beams, the wider the light dots are space out for greater coverage. So control the way the light dots fall on the subject, requires some techniques.

There's a knob on the diopter lens adaptor that as you turn, the effect changes, as all the light dots merged into many small rectangles, and a few tweaks, the rectangles merged into many individual dots. Here are the images.

All these images were taken with my mobile camera so the quality is not as good. However it looks awesome on sight during the light-painting process.

With this new tool, I see some potentials in creating interesting nocturne work. It also got me to think out of the box. Well in the process of creative photography, experimentation is essential. Thus, I will experiment on some light-painting techniques with this green laser pointer and in hope that I would discover some useful ones to apply on my nocturne project.