I need some advice, unfortunately on short notice

[zombiemann]

I woke up this morning to being bombarded with information about a hot air balloon festival not far from here. I have been informed that I will be in attendance this evening (I just love having a say in these things lol) At dusk they are going to be lighting them up and I figure that is going to be an opportunity for some great photography. I know that lighting is going to be very tricky. I will be using my T2i and most likely my 18-55 kit lens (I don't really have much in the way of lenses). Any advice for maximizing my potential for good shots?

Thanks in advance

 

[jwbryson1]

Get close and don't shoot the "whole" balloon in your shots. Get the colors.

 

[jjparson]

You also may consider taking a tripod with you if you have one. Depending on the light you may want to shoot a slow enough shutter speed to keep ISO in check at an appropriate aperture to keep things in focus. You could search on flickr for hot air balloon shots to get some ideas as well. Good luck and have fun!

 

[KenC]

Watch out for backlighting. If you're shooting a back-lit balloon, better to get close and exclude the sky as much as possible. Better yet, just stand where the light is behind you (if you can).

 

[Superfitz]

You should be ok. Probably won't get any spectacular shots, but will get a few good enough for personal collections. I happened upon one of those last month when I was visiting family. All I had with me was my camera and a 28-135mm kit lens. Shoot either manual or Aperture priority. Bump your iso up (not crazy high). You should even be able to handhold your lens if you keep your ISO around 800. To make things easier you should take a tripod or monopod. I had neither of those with me. The balloons give off a lot more light than you would think.

 

[zombiemann]

Yea, my tripod lives in the trunk of my car

They are doing a "glow" at dusk and I plan on scouting out a spot to shoot from as soon as we get there. I really want to be facing east (at least I think) so the setting sun is behind me

 

[Superfitz]

That is a good deal. You probably won't have to go up to 800 with your ISO then since you'll have a tripod. The one I went to waited until the sun had dropped behind the horizon prior to lighting up in full force. I went back the next day armed with my tripod and different lenses, but they canceled, of course, due to weather.

 

[pgriz]

When you have tricky lighting situations, go with spot meter, and manual settings. For ISO under low light, your camera should be fine with ISO 400, and maybe even 800. Aperture depends on the DOF you need. Let's assume 55mm focal length, f/5.6 and 300 ft. to subject distance: That gives you a DOF of 70 ft. to infinity. (Spot) meter the sky, the balloons, the flame flares, the ground. Get an idea of the brightness distribution. Assuming you have typical brightness levels of 10-20 minutes after sunset, you'll be at EV 8-10, which means that you will shoot at 1/60 sec f/5.6 at ISO 800. Very do-able. If the subject is brighter, your spot-meter will help you figure out by how much you need to adjust the exposure. I suggest you stay in manual just because it's easier to get consistent exposures in scenes with wildly-varying brightness values.

 

[zombiemann]

I don't know if it's the lens or the sensor but I have noticed that anything over ISO 800 tends to get really noisy. I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to "bracket" shots like I would if taking an HDR. That way I have multiple levels of exposure to pick from when Im doing my post processing.

 

[pgriz]

I don't know if it's the lens or the sensor but I have noticed that anything over ISO 800 tends to get really noisy. I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to "bracket" shots like I would if taking an HDR. That way I have multiple levels of exposure to pick from when Im doing my post processing.

Bracketing is not a bad idea, and I'd suggest you use ISO 400 unless you're just not getting good images. Tripod will obviously remove the camera shake from the exposure equation, but you may still have subject movement, so the shutter speed you end up selecting should contribute to your artistic vision. Blur can be good if properly used.

 

[zombiemann]

Thanks again for all the help. I had a small crisis, but I think I recovered nicely. I posted some pics in the Landscape area (yea wrong forum, it's been a long day, already reported to the mods)