How to: light painting with the Huawei P20 Pro

Huawei's P20 Pro is the current reigning smartphone photography king, but there's plenty more to the camera app than just taking good photos. One of the more unique features you'll find is a dedicated light painting mode.

To access it, you'll need to fire up the camera, tap more, then tap light painting.

Not familiar with light painting? It's a photographic technique where you use a handheld light source to "draw" on top of a photo by using long exposure times. It's kind of like when you get light trails behind cars when taking a photo of a highway at night. It can look a bit like this:

To light paint with a DSLR you'd typically drop the ISO as low as it can go, close the aperture, and set a long shutter speed upward of, say, at least five seconds. This can take a bit of practice and experimentation; if you set too long a shutter speed, or have your lens too open, you risk blowing the image out.

The P20 Pro has a slightly different approach to light painting. It takes one initial shot which it uses as a background layer, and then adds in extra elements based on their luminescence. This prevents the background from blowing out, and in turn, means you can keep shooting for however long you'd like and keep layering light. It also means the P20 Pro can be used for light painting in environments that would be too bright for a DSLR.

While there's professional light painting tools available (priced over $200), Alex Kesselaar from LightPaint Lab says you can use almost any basic light source - even the flash off from another phone or a sparkler. In terms of simple tools, he recommends a keychain torch that has an easy to toggle on and off switch; this will make it easier if you want to make discrete shapes or write words. Just get creative: you could light up an empty gin bottle, buy some cheap LEDs and put them on a rope, or just cover a torch with some cellophane.

You'll want a tripod with a smartphone mount, otherwise you'll end up with a blurry mess. It's also best if you avoid wearing anything white or reflective, as this will make you more prominent in the resulting shot.

Here's some more of the photos we managed to grab:

Light painting on other smartphones

If you want to try light painting on your own smartphone - and you don't own a P20 Pro - you've still got options.

Many Android smartphone cameras have a "Pro" or "Manual" mode where you can adjust settings like ISO and shutter speed yourself. If your Android phone doesn't support long enough exposure times, you could check out FV-5.

If you've got an iPhone, you'll need to grab a manual camera app from the App Store, or an app designed for long exposure photography. Slow Shutter Cam, for example.

Alex Choros

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Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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