Dragon Lasers 50mW 589nm Spartan FS!

Note 4 should take some nice beam shots if you fog up the room.

my heart goes out to you isaac.
i can only dream of owning a 589.

If there's a man of honor, Pman is that.

I bow down to you, sir. With great respect.

Makes me want to cry. I wanted a gold one to complete my collection. Now I have to sell off most of my own "children" too.

Here ya go

Very nice sharp photos! I especially like the second to last shot.

Yeah well I finally started using my laser and camera stands lol
I'm really embarrassed to tell you the truth over all my crappy pics. It was VERY easy to set those shots up and until now all I did was try to hold the camera steady while taking them. I thought it would take a huge amount of time to set stuff up so I didn't do it. I would like to apologize for all my terrible beam shots before now
I'm only using an Olympus SP-500UZ but I do have my Galaxy Note 4 and a Canon Powershot S3 IS. The Canon would probably take better pics.
The issue with the Olympus is taking a pic without the flash. If I have it in Auto mode with the flash then it takes OK pics but if I put the flash down 99/100 pics will be blurry.
The Canon has image stabilization and is a better overall camera so I should be taking the pics with that one. No idea how my Note 4 would do just because even though its specs are way higher than the others its not like it has a "real" lens.
Anyways, coming from brucemir it means a lot to get any comment

Those blue lights in the background are just a string of blue rope-light on the stairs as I'm down in my main theater/stereo room. My stereo/home theater equipment is like my lasers..... stupid # amps and speakers. If you can figure out how many lasers I own you divide it by 10 to come up with how many amplifiers I'm running. The sheer power to room size puts IMAX to shame lol

Canon optical image stabilization is fantastic. But you shouldn't need it with a decent tripod and something like this

11" inch Articulating Magic Arm Super Clamp Crab Plier Clip for Camera DSLR | eBay

It's not obvious from the photo but the barrel bit at one end comes apart and forms a female thread for tripod attachment, and the male at the other end goes into the camera. Or use the clamp on something convenient (they're good for holding lasers too!)

Rep added for the lovely shots

Hey Pman, for the Olympus I suspect that the reason you are getting ok pics with the flash but blurry without is that the camera is getting slight movement during the exposure. The flash is very brief and serves to freeze action in place. If your camera has a manual setting, try making the shutter speed over a second and put it on a tripod. Also, if your Olympus has a timer, I highly recommend setting a short(usually 3 second) timer so that the action of pressing the shutter release button doesn't cause vibrations in the picture.

^yeah looks like that's what was happening and brucemir told me what to do about it in a pm. Just stupid of me not using my tripods to begin with for a steady shot. Looks like I won't have any excuse now for crappy shots

adjustable shutter speed is a must for good beam shots. I wonder about ISO. I heard 200 is good for light painting, I reasoned capturing beams is a similar endeavor, so I use that. it seems to work but I'm open to suggestion.

but yeah when I take beam shots, the exposure length I use changes depending on factors like angle, fog, and laser power. I'd agree around 1 sec should be good for this 589. the smaller the incriment by which the shutter speed can be adjusted, the better. usually I take a sequence of progressively longer exposures and then pick a favorite. my camera's screen does not properly display some wavelengths, even though the camera does pick them up, I have to judge them by how they look on a computer screen

Increase length of exposure rather than ISO. High ISO will give you a lot of noise and decreasing noise in post degrades resolution.

so what is an ideal ISO? would it be different for any wavelengths?

For photographing lasers I always use ISO 125 and have always gotten good results for any wavelength.

The ideal ISO is that which is native to your cameras sensor. On some older models I believe that meant ISO 200, it's normally 100 though.

My t3i rebel takes good pics at 400 iso. I don't get alot of nose till 1600

and I have a 1.8/f 50mm lens which is eye level zoom and lets a hell of alot of light in.

I've used magic lantern and got some good few minute exposures at up to 400 iso.