Spotlight effect is hard to catch!

Its a really hard effect to catch the beam looks so epic at night defocused though since even in that state the entire thing is visible. Its hard to tell from the pictures but that spot is probably 20ft wide. Its shining in to a tree thats actually a good ways away. It looks sort of piddly on the camera though

Focused

Defocused horizontal

Defocused vertical

You can capture the beam as you'd like but it'll take a bit of preparation.

1. Use a vice or tripod system to hold the laser steady.
2. Use a tripod for your camera.

You'll have to experiment with the exposure settings on your camera. The settings may not need to be adjusted once you simply get everything steadied.
If that doesn't suffice then you'll need to increase the exposure time on your camera.

If you apply these 2-3 tips you absolutely will improve the results of your photos.

Hope that helps!

-Scott

I use on my pics i posted a kodak camera Shutter time 1 second , ISO-80 , no flash.
Use a tripod for your camera.
good enough for a few nice pics.
Good luck.

Higher ISO is better if your camera can support it. My new camera can run up to ISO 6400 I think, but it's a backlit CMOS sensor. Does wonders in the dark.

With regular point and shoot camera's, put it on a tripod, set it to manual focus, focus it then use about a 1-5 second exposure. DO not touch anything while it's taking the picture or it'll blur. It's soo easy to screw up a long exposure with something as simple as wind bumping your tripod.

Also, try playing around with modes on your camera. Some have modes for fireworks etc that would probably work well with lasers too.