Light painting small objects with Live Composite

I think Live Composite on Olympus OMDs has great application to product and other small object photography. I posted a couple of my experiments to prior weekly threads, but one member asked me to start a new thread to discuss the technique.

In case you're not familiar with it, Live Composite records a series of exposures and blends them together in camera. You start by selecting an initial shutter speed and aperture and then press the shutter release once for a dark frame exposure. Pressing the release a second times starts to record the scene at a specified shutter speed and aperture. The camera continues to record only LIGHTER elements from successive exposures, each at the same shutter speed/aperture setting until you press the shutter release a third time.

This is essentially the same as blending exposures in PhotoShop, using the Lighten blending mode. However, the Olympus in-camera approach allows you to see this happening in real time on your LCD or EVF and you can record many more frames than you would ever want to blend together in PS.

So, here's an example of a small subject (a prototype of a small differential gear), first shot with just one soft light on either side (two windows). This was 3.2 seconds at f/13 in aperture-preferred mode.

I then set the camera to Live Composite in M mode, setting my starting exposure for 1/2 second at f/13. This gave me the same DOF as above, but an underexposure for the first frame of about 2-1/2 stops. I then proceeded to light the subject with a small flashlight, moving it around to different angles.

As above, I used the flashlight for a wide backlight, but also shielded it with my hands to form a narrower beam to reach between the gears and under them. I turn the flashlight off while moving it to each new angle. In all, I think I used seven or eight different angles for the subject below, plus a couple of sweeping motions of the light to brighten up the foreground. The total exposure was about a minute, which means the Olympus recorded approximately 120 frames.

Again, this is not something that can't be done by other means. You COULD blend in PS. Or, you could set up 8-10 different small lights for a single shot. But, hey, this is a LOT easier and I think it works pretty well.

(The only editing of the above shots was some cropping)