My First attempt with steel wool

Looking good! I had my first go yesterday and got similar results. Think we need to find better locations now the spinning is sorted;)
 
I've always found that doing this in a skateboard ramp gives nice results! Would you mind if i upload a photo to explain?
 
These look brilliant! I'm thinking of having a practise this week with some stwool! What did you use to light it and what type of wool did you use?

Do you mind posting a little walkthrough to your shoot? :)
 
9V battery works well to light it - and I find that 0000 works nicely
 
farrance said:
These look brilliant! I'm thinking of having a practise this week with some stwool! What did you use to light it and what type of wool did you use?

Do you mind posting a little walkthrough to your shoot? :)
Click to expand...

I got some fine steel wool from Homebase, needs to be fine, the medium stuff doesn't work very well.

http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wc...ay?langId=110&storeId=10151&partNumber=651559

Then took one of the rolls in the pack and separated it as much as I could then put into a round bird feeder like this

http://www.wildbirddirect.com/products/round-copper-nut-feeder/

The lid and chain that came with it came off on my first attempt to spin so I had to replace it with some thin chain I had lying around which I attached more securely to the feeder.

Setup your camera on your tripod, I used a wide angle lens, f4.5 and an exposure time of 15 seconds.

Press the shutter button then run into position and rub a 9v battery on the wire, it will start to spark straight away. Swing it around as fast as you can, that's it!

The sparks are very hot though so be careful not to set fire to anything and make sure you wear eye protection. The bird feeder was seriously hot afterwards too so make sure you don't touch it with your bare hands for a while after.
 
nice matt i did my first one last night, i went with some people who have done it before so ....try f8 for 4-8 seconds and don,t trip your shutter til the sparks start flying hth mike great start hope you had fun like i did (y):clap:
 
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