picture taking at night time camp fires?
by admin on Friday, December 24th, 2010 | 2 Comments
I have a point and shoot Canon Powershot sd1100 and tonight my kids and I are going to make a camp fire in the yard. I wanted to take a bunch of pictures but im not sure what setting to set it to or the whole apiture/lighting settings. Can anyone help me?
Well since your camera offers no real control over shutter and exposure I’d let the camera decide.
However here’s some tips. When you want to shoot have your kids take a pose and then hold it – no blinking no moving because while the shutter is open all these movements will be seen as blur. It’s not going to be easy for the kids so rehearse with them, perhaps before the event. Make them understand what they need to do. This is some basic model training – I’ll show you a photo later that I did with my grand daughter by candle light – I had to train her as well. I use an SLR by Canon but camera make and model doesn’t matter, blur is blur.
Second a tripod is a must. The camera has to be steady because all camera movement will also be seen as blur so don’t move the camera
or try to hand hold it, trust me, it won’t work.
Third, use your 10-second delay. Even the motion of you pressing the shutter release will cause blur.
Fourth. Fire, as candle light, is very red. You’re probably going to be disappointed when you first look at what you have. Some post will probably be necessary to make the colors correct. In the photo I’ve posted below I did quite a bit of color correction because of the red light.
Don’t be discouraged if your first try doesn’t turn out… they seldom do.
Take many, many shots by the camp fire, they’re only digital files and are easily removed – no harm, no foul. If you get just one out of say
40 you’ll have done well.
Low light can be very tricky so follow these steps, especially the kids training part – they have to remain completely still – difficult for kids.
Another thing I did with my grand daughter is count down to shutter open. “do your blinking now,” I told her, she did and it took about
4-hours over two nights to get one shot but to me, that one shot is worth all the time and effort.
Good Luck and here’s that photo I promised.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimsphotostuff/3902585605/sizes/l/
If you want to discuss further feel free to email via my profile.
Jim
See if you can go into MENU and change the ISO to 1600.
The picture may be too grainy or noisy so you can also try ISO 800.
you can try different settings of Exposure compensation like +2 to make the picture lighter, but then you may get blurry pics unless you use a tripod.
You can try Exposure compensation -1 or -2 to cut blurring but then the overall picture will get darker too.
You can also try Flash pictures with Flash set to AUTO (A + lightning bolt) or non-auto (lightning bolt) since the flash is not that powerful, the background will still be dark for that night time look.