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Need help quickly: Shooting fire at night
As part of the Christmas festivities, Madrid has put up an interesting work of street/environmental art. They have covered a large plaza with ancient looking iron sculptures holding hundreds of torches. There are also some (dare I say it?) quixotic constructions involving musical instruments, 1950s radios, undershirts turned into lamps, and the like. It is simultaneously 19th and 21st century. People really seem to enjoy it.
OK, so I went out last night to try to take some pics. I knew I didn't know what I was doing, but figured I could learn from the results and reshoot again tonight. The main problem is how to keep the background visible while not blowing out the highlights of the flames. I tried using fill flash, but most of the shots came out badly, either because of all the smoke in the air from the torches, or because the flash lit up too much of the ground nearby. Here are a couple samples.
This was shot without flash. I boosted the exposure when converting from raw but otherwise haven't modified it.
Click on pic for EXIF
As you can see, the flames are blown while the rest of the scene is way too dark. I shot it at EV -1.
Here's one shot using flash, with no post processing at all:
Once again, the fire is blown, though the rest could probably be salvaged in post. I know that the white balance needs adjusting on both of the shots, but my concern is with the exposure.
So, any tips on how to handle this, either camera settings or post? I am planning on trying again tonight with a tripod, but there are so many people milling about that I'm not sure longer exposures are going to buy me much. The good news is that I will get a third and final try tomorrow night.
BTW, one final question: Do I need to be concerned about smoke damaging my camera or lenses? I'm pretty sure the torches use parafin. I have a UV filter but I didn't use it yesterday because of concern about flaring. Should I be using it? I'm guessing that the camera itself is safe, but please let me know if that's not true. It's a cool scene, but not worth screwing up my 20D.
Thanks,
OK, so I went out last night to try to take some pics. I knew I didn't know what I was doing, but figured I could learn from the results and reshoot again tonight. The main problem is how to keep the background visible while not blowing out the highlights of the flames. I tried using fill flash, but most of the shots came out badly, either because of all the smoke in the air from the torches, or because the flash lit up too much of the ground nearby. Here are a couple samples.
This was shot without flash. I boosted the exposure when converting from raw but otherwise haven't modified it.
Click on pic for EXIF
As you can see, the flames are blown while the rest of the scene is way too dark. I shot it at EV -1.
Here's one shot using flash, with no post processing at all:
Once again, the fire is blown, though the rest could probably be salvaged in post. I know that the white balance needs adjusting on both of the shots, but my concern is with the exposure.
So, any tips on how to handle this, either camera settings or post? I am planning on trying again tonight with a tripod, but there are so many people milling about that I'm not sure longer exposures are going to buy me much. The good news is that I will get a third and final try tomorrow night.
BTW, one final question: Do I need to be concerned about smoke damaging my camera or lenses? I'm pretty sure the torches use parafin. I have a UV filter but I didn't use it yesterday because of concern about flaring. Should I be using it? I'm guessing that the camera itself is safe, but please let me know if that's not true. It's a cool scene, but not worth screwing up my 20D.
Thanks,
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Tamron AF18-200mm F3.5-6.3 XR Di II LD
Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II LD Aspherical
Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor
Nikon SB-800 Speedlight
There is probably no way to capture the light levels you are dealing with without some compromise somewhere as you have already pointed out. You could shoot from a tripod and bracket and combine in post of course, but I get the feeling there is too much commotion for you to prefer this way of shooting.
I think you may be on the right track to try to balance the lighting with flash. I think I would try shooting in Av mode with some -(minus) Flash Exposure Compensation as you described. Might even throw in some 2nd shutter curtain to try to capture some of the movement of the flames as well.
You might try using the flash by bouncing it off a wall behind you or beside you, first to create a much larger light source also, with an ISO of 200 or more.
Looks like an interesting situation to shoot.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
douglas
The plaza is mostly wide open space, so the the chances of using bounce flash are limited. Thanks for the suggestion though, Pathfinder.
Last night was about as unsuccessful as the first night. OK, so cool as it may be, I am going to forget about trying to capture the whole scene. Instead, tonight I think I will try to just capture small bits of the scene in the hope that the light might be more manageable that way. We'll see.
Cheers,
Hi Richard. I'm no expert, but I'll toss in my 2 cents if you're still looking for ideas. My suggestions are mostly academic since I've never faced this kind of lighting situation before, but maybe it will give you some new ideas to test.
If it were me, I would go with manual mode and find an exposure that keeps the fire from being too far blown out per the in-camera histogram. I would be more tolerant of blown highlights when the flames are far away, like in your first shot, than I would be of a close-up like your second shot.
I notice on your EXIFs that you were shooting in ISO 1600. I think that if you use a lower ISO (do you have a faster lens?) you'll be able to salvage a lot more shadow detail in post processing.
When choosing exposure, you might watch that the luminance histogram will be misleading for subjects with lots of red (i.e., fire light). Watch the individual channels on the in-camera histogram since the red channel is likely to blow out first.
You could also try a blue filter to balance the color cast before it reaches the sensor. I think this would make post-processing more successful, even though it means I'd need a slightly higher ISO.
Regarding filters, my preference would be to risk some lens flare rather than take a chance of getting a nasty coating of wax and soot on my lens.
Good luck! If you find something that works, please share.
Regards,
Mike
Andyw
Regards,
I suspect I will end up with lots you can learn from here.
If you have a flash capable of FP/HSS (Focal Plane/High Speed Sync), you might give that a try. I doubt that an automatic mode on the camera will help, so experiment with full manual on the camera, but let the flash do its thing in E-TTL FP mode.
I would stay at ISO 1600 and wide open, f2.8, to get the best shutter speeds.
Good luck,
ziggy53
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
If you can't do that, use a very large card to bounce the flash and effectively "lift" the light up from the lens.
If you can't do that, lift the camera and flash above your head, and angle it down. You'll get a (possibly) more interesting view and a little better feathering of the flash.
ziggy53
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Thanks a lot, Ziggy. I saw your first post before I went out shooting, but not the second. I haven't looked at this evening's catch yet, but what little I could see in the LCD makes me think that the flames were mostly blown. I shot a few frames with the flash angled up and the little bounce card extended, and a couple of those seemed to work. We'll see. I probably won't get to processing them for a few days, but I'll let you all know how it came out.
Cheers,
I realize the event is over now, but I happened to come across some bonfire photos on Flickr that were nicely exposed. This got me started on a search for other photos of campfire, torches, and bonfires to see what exposure settings were used. Using the ISO setting as the shutter speed, it appears that f/5.6 results in really beautiful flames, but everthing else is in deep shadow. Increasing the exposure to f/3.5 still looks acceptable, and f/2.8 looks like too much. But I wouldn't doubt that f/2.8 would be salvagable from a RAW file.
It looks like your shots were equivalent to 3 and 4 stops brighter than f/2.8 with ISO as shutter speed. Therefore I don't think this scene is really possible to capture with the dynamic range of a digital sensor without sacrificing a lot of shadow detail.
But this is all academic. Did any of your shots from the next night turn out any better?
Mike
I finished working up the fire pics, but the results were not entirely satisfactory. As a few of you have pointed out, compromise is inevitable. Here are a few examples. They were all shot at 1600 ISO in aperture priority mode. The first two were shot with a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 and the last two with a Canon 17-40 f/4L.
Shot with flash angled up and bounce card extended, f/2.8, 1/25 sec, EV 0 and FEV -.67. I like the composition of this pic, but the face is blown and the whole pic is soft--probably the combination of high ISO, low DOF and shooting too slow without a tripod.
I have quite a few more shots, but these are representative (of the better ones
Cheers,
-Fleetwood Mac