Ever wanted to achieve creative and fun results in photography?
It’s easy. You just need an optical glass prism.
Photography with a prism is a fun way to add some artistic and sometimes surreal effects to your photos. You can also use it to delete unwanted objects from your frame.
What’s unique about prisms is that all of this can be achieved without Photoshop or post-processing. Another advantage is that prisms are inexpensive and fit in almost any bag.
In this blog post, I’m going to guide you through prisming in photography. You’ll learn how to take creative photos using a prism.
Contents
What is a Photography Prism?
A photography prism is a piece of optical glass that can be used to reflect light and create a creative photo effect for your photos.
Usually, this prism is made of glass and works best with a source of light flowing right through the prism. Then the light is refracted through the glass and creates a colourful photo effect.
What Do You Need For Prism Photography?
One of the greatest aspects of prism photography is that you don’t need a lot of extra equipment.
All you need to start taking a cool prism photo:
- Any camera
- A prism
You can also use your smartphone for this sort of photograph. You can select your lens if you are using a DSLR. A lens with wide apertures can produce smoother results. Try lenses of 24mm, 35mm and 50mm.
You’re probably wondering what could be used as a prism. The best thing is to start with a triangular glass prism. Don’t worry; it’s not going to cost you a fortune. You can start with any size you want.
The best thing is that you can conveniently carry this little piece of equipment in your bag whenever you want, making it easy always to take cool photos. Make sure you have a cloth next to you to clean any fingerprints on your prism.
Check out the best prisms for photography.
How to Use a Prism When Taking Photos?
Some tips and key items to keep in mind when using a photo prism:
- Hold the prism with one hand in front of your camera lens.
- Don't cover the lens entirely with your prism (use your viewfinder to preview images).
- Find a light source to add colour to your photos.
- Experiment with different angles by rotating the prism.
- Adjust the aperture to be as minimal as possible (F-stop of around two or lower works best).
- Set the focus mode to the manual and use the trial and error mode to achieve perfect effects.
How Do You Make a Prism Effect?
Any time you want to work with the prism, you need to position it close to the lens in the frame area where you want the effect to be. Then shift and rotate the prism slowly to explore the effects you can produce and how to make them happen.
It can be hard to try to keep the prism and take your aim at the same time. Try using a tripod to help you out. Please use Live View on your camera.
This way, you can easily change the location of the prism to produce the effect you like without having to deal with all the equipment in your hands.
Prism Photography Effects You Should Try
Using a prism for photography and filmmaking can create a range of unique effects. I’ve provided a list of some of the creative effects that you can make.
Some of these tips involve using the prism as a means of creating better lighting or removing artefacts from the frame for a better composite shot.
Refract Light for Rainbow Color Effect
You can use a photo prism to refract light to create a rainbow colour effect.
Light refraction works well for portraits and can help to improve the image by adding some colour.
Create Image Reflection
Using a triangular glass prism you can reflect the image by angling the prism in a certain way in front of the camera.
To make it work, you need the corner of the triangular prism to be directly in front of your lens so that the lens captures a 45-degree angle of tilting in both sides of the corner.
Balance Light Source Overexposed
One of my favourite prism photo effects is to use a glass prism to obscure a source of overexposed lighting.
If you shoot midday and have bright lights that point directly to your subject from the background, you can use the photo prism to block or diffuse the light source.
It will help to balance the exposure in your image while creating an original photo effect for your images.
In-Camera Creative Video Transition
The glass prism video transfer will be for the filmmaker.
This is a perfect transition for wedding movies because the prism gives a starry and refractory look that works well for live settings.
Block Distracting Objects in Shot
One of the most underestimated photo prism techniques is to use it to block distracting objects out of your frame.
When you a capturing something with additional objects in the picture, you can use prism to block all the distractions.
Some Important Tips for Creative Photos When Prisming
- Start with a triangular prism that is the easiest, and once you know how prisms work and what you can do with them, try several other prisms.
- Use prism for any type of photography you want, such as portraits, lifestyle, still life, landscape, weddings, wildlife, architecture, cityscapes, etc.
- Experiment with other glasses, CDs, other lenses from research laboratories, such as concave lenses, various forms and formed crystals, etc. Each of them would yield different results.
- If you're in a scene where you don't think the light is in your favour and you don't have the magic touch, just take out the prism and use it to control the light in the scene. You can turn a dull scene into a fascinating one this way.
- Try prisms with artificial light as they can produce fascinating effects in your images, in addition to the rainbow effect, with natural light in the shot.
- Do not use prism for outdoor photography on overcast days because it can make the image look flat and dark without any exciting effects.
- To get various results, change the distance between the lens and the prism. You can also adjust your location relative to the light source and search for various light effects.
- Make sure you wipe the prism when it's needed to remove the fingerprints from the lens because it can destroy the image and reduce the quality of the light entering the lens.
- If depending on the situation, you find it difficult to keep the camera in one hand and the prism in the other, consider using a tripod or a monopod to support, using a live view to compose the images, if necessary.
- Often go for a quality glass or crystal prisms because just as you need good quality lens glasses for sharp and beautiful images, you need to use quality glass for everything you place in front of the lens.
