Night Time and Flames????

[batherst]

Hi guys

Would jus like to know your thoughts on shooting flames in the dark. wha sort of settings am i going to have to use.I am a firefighter and would like to know ow to capture the houses that we go to on fire normally at night. any help would be great, thanks.

 

[D-50]

To properly shoot nighttime photography you will need a tripod. Use manual setting and set your exposure time to at least a couple seconds. Although if you are one of the people who is actually fighting the fires Im not sure if your chief would be happy with you setting up a tripod and shooting the fire instead of trying to put it out.

 

[batherst]

my thoughts exactly. if i miss the truck and get some pix ill see how they cme out.

 

[Garbz]

Flames are actually pretty bright. You may have sucess with a large aperture, medium-high iso, and handheld.

 

[mr_baseball_08]

Flames are actually pretty bright. You may have sucess with a large aperture, medium-high iso, and handheld.

That was my thinking.. You could probably shoot at ISO 200/400 handheld very easily with a 5.6 or so aperture. It's sort of like shooting the moon, and could possibly be brighter. That is, if you're taking pictures of the actual flames.

 

[MACollum]

I took some shots of the BBQ fire one night. They came out good but there were issues with the fact that it was dark and that fire is in motion. I found that I had to do lots of shooting to get some that captured movement that I wanted. In the dark it's impossible to freeze the motion of the fire without flash, and I wanted the fire to be the light source.

 

[Alex_B]

My last shots of flames in the night did not require any flash. flash does not really illuminate the flames anyway, but the background.

Fire is usually rather bright and you would also normally not need a tripod ... just go up with the ISO a bit (400-800, depends on your lens and the actual type of fire).