Night Photography

[knockknocking]

Greetings all,

 

I have been given a fantastic opportunity to photograph the Beltane Fire

Festival in Edinburgh end of April. Does anyone have any advise and tips for me

as to definate DOs and Don'ts for night time and fire photography? I have an

EOS 5D as well as a 50mm 1.8 lens, also I might attempt to use my 19 - 38mm 2.8

wide angle (if the numbers for the lenses are off, please excuse as they are new

lenses which I don't have to hand at the moment) Should I set my camera to auto

white balance etc? Thanks in advance

 

Nedine

[leicaglow]

As this photo will attest, use a tripod!<g> What I've found is that fire is not a static object; it moves, it is graceful, it is vibrant. You can do a lot with fire. I find that using averaging a spot in the fire and a dark area around it will give a pretty good exposure. I shot this image with a D50 (my "pocket" camera at the time), with an 18-35mm lens at 18mm. I could have used a tripod to get the people sharper, but they were moving around anyway. I thought about using a flash, but didn't have enough control over it to get the effect I wanted, which was the people exposed at about 3 stops under. I had to use a long enough exposure (I think about 1/10 second) wide open at ISO 200 (to reduce noise, which didn't matter anyway because the people were moving so much anyway that a large print wouldn't be good looking anyway).<div></div>

[klix]

<i>As this photo will attest, use a tripod! - Michael </i>

<p><p>

Actually, for the Beltane Festival, a tripod is the last thing you'll need. There will be 10,000 to 15,000 people at the festival, and to be able to catch enough of the festival's "flavors" (or "flavours") you will need to move around fairly quickly.

<p><p>

It's a big party with A LOT of people. I would suggest using flash, and no more than 2 lenses. I shoot Nikon, and if I were doing this, my 2 lenses would be a 12-24mm and a 28-70mm/2.8 AFS.

<p><p>

For interesting effects, drag your shutter for some images.

[www.philwinterphotography.]

I'm not familiar with the festival you mention, but in general, night photography requires a tripod, remote release, and an understanding of how to set mirror lockup. You may not need MLU with exposures faster than about 1/20 or slower than about 5 seconds, but I use it all the time just to make sure. Exposure can be tricky because some things (fire) are very bright and some are very dark (black sky). Watch your histogram. Night histograms will be primarily dark, with very bright spikes at the right edge. Between now an April, practice, practice.

 

Phil

[DickArnold]

I have photographed burning buildings at night without a tripod. Meter the fire. Put the camera on manual set the exposure and shoot flash if you want people in the foreground.

[hank bresson]

Mettez en sac le tr鰩ed, employez un flash.

[hank bresson]

Freaking Americain Clavier.

[Uhooru]

With your 5D use your fastest lens, set the iso high open the bugger up, zoom with your feet, set to A priority and fire away. keep track of your shutter speed, you'll know when you'll get blur or not. You'll get blurs, you'll get hot spots, you'll get some sharp. Just do it and have fun. Don't use a tripod, unless you can get up high on something or maybe some interesting time lapse stuff. Use the flash too when you want. On the Nikon, I generally go ittl with camera in shutter priority. Or really nice is to drag the shutter w/flash. Tripod will be a pain to carry around in a party situation.

 

All these without flash or tripod, yeah they're ugly..but it is an approach.

 

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/153/371620141_b0096eace8.jpg?v=0">

 

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/142/393830654_6fe7411686.jpg?v=0">

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/393816925_1b05139e33.jpg?v=0">

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/98/371620139_1f5aa997de.jpg?v=1169970387">

[stephen_w.]

People and fire move. A tripod is useless when the subjects move. Plus, they're a pain to carry, and impossible to set-up in a crowd, especially a drunk one.

[jonj]

Make sure you expose for the fire not the dark areas behind the Fire. I use a monopod I hate tripods. The monopod will help I can get good shots at 1/15 @1600 using it. Good luck

[jb17kx]

Perhaps you should try using wide aperture and slower shutter, around 1/15th or 1/30th, and then a small low power rear curtain flash. This should give the effect of allowing ambient light to have its place, but also come close to freezing the motion of the people you're photographing. I belelive Ian Berry did something like this for the Rio De Janeiro carnival.

[Uhooru]

J.B. I believe also and maybe you met Harvey Alan David, or is it David Alan Harvey? Or Alan David harvey? or???? but in any event there were shots from Rio appearing to use that technipue and it is very cool. I believe its what Iwas describing as slow shutter speed with flash (drag shutter and flash).