How To Create Your Own Roomba Art

Mesmerized by those Roomba art images in one of last week's blog posts? Perhaps you'd like to know how you can come up with your own.

First, you'd like to focus on learning about long exposure photography, a technique using slow shutter speeds. I don't intend to give a thorough tutorial but at least this post will point you to the right direction.

The most common images using long exposure photography are of vehicles' light trails taken (of course) during night time. Night time offers natural low light conditions, which make this effect easily achievable.

long exposure



In fact, nearly all featured Roomba art images were pulled off using simple digicams a.k.a. Point & Shoots. Essentially, dimming or switching the lights off such that the only light source were the LEDs on the Roomba were the only surrounding requirements.

Just so you know, the same technique can also be used during the day to achieve blurring effects. For example, you can easily shoot a cyclist speeding away. But after looking at the picture, the 'speeding' component is nowhere in sight.

Perhaps, the only trace of him 'speeding away' would be his contracted muscles and contorted face. To make it appear that the cyclist is really whizzing past whatever background there is, you can set the shutter to open for a longer time and aim for both the cyclist and the trees (for example). One of the subjects, whether the trees or the cyclist, must be at rest with respect to the camera to achieve the speeding effect.

Other daytime examples are the cotton like images of creeping fog over a mountainside or water running down a waterfalls or over rocks in a stream.

I'm not going to provide any sample images of those two scenarios mentioned earlier lest this site turns into a photography blog. That said, let's go back to our Roomba artworks. Like I said earlier, while many enhancements can be added by using DSLRs (i.e., more sophisticated cameras), simple Point & Shoots will suffice.

Most Point and Shoot (P&S) cameras will allow you to set their shutter speed, but for those who can't find that feature conspicuous enough (if the camera supports it at all), try looking into the Night Scenes mode. Some P&S cameras have some kind of added feature in that mode that will let you set the shutter speed there.

Lower the ISO setting. This will bring down the film speed, which is the film's sensitivity to light.

To achieve optimal effects, i.e., that of a moving objects such as the Roomba, a portion of your image must be totally still. THIS CANNOT BE OVEREMPHASIZED - THE CAMERA MUST BE TOTALLY STILL unless you have some innovative effect in mind. Thus, common sense will tell you that, unless you're one of the Queen's Foot Guards at Buckingham Palace, you'll need a tripod.

For the Roomba shots, I guess they had to secure their digicams to the ceiling or any other really elevated area.

If you don't have steady hands, you might consider purchasing a remote shutter release. The slightest movement can ruin your long exposure shots. However, if you don't want to spend the extra buck, a workaround would be to use your digital camera's built in self timer.

I guess that should be enough to give you a decent start. Set up your digital camera, switch off the lights, sprinkle some soil on a few locations on the floor (to obtain the spiral formations), and let your little Roomba wave its long exposure magic wand.

Enjoy!

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