bigtex2000 Loc: Arlington, TX

Totally agree :thumbup: :thumbup:

skidooman Loc: Minnesota

I just want to add to make sure your flash is in manual mode also, and adjust it only for your subject. Putting the flash in rear/second curtain sync mode, it fires at the end of your exposure. This allows your slow shutter speed to soak up all that fire light. Good luck, let's see the end result :)

skidooman Loc: Minnesota

Your welcome, looking forward to seeing the results.

bigtex2000 Loc: Arlington, TX

Thanks again skidooman....I can't wait to try this out, Now convincing the wife to stay awake until it gets dark.

skidooman Loc: Minnesota

Best of luck with that :lol:

GTinSoCal Loc: Palmdale, CA

Second curtain sync is an excellent technique for slower shutter speeds.
This shot was taken ay:
f10, 1 sec ISO 100

Looking forward to seeing your fire hoop shots :-)

GT

bigtex2000 Loc: Arlington, TX

Thanks GT.......I really appreciate the settings help. That is a great photo.....I hope my results will be that good.

GTinSoCal Loc: Palmdale, CA

Thank you,
unfortunately I don't remember my flash settings.

The great thing about low-light photography with flash is you can use photo-slaves, you don't need e-ttl or rf triggers.

With low light levels a flash will trigger a slave very dependably, even outdoors.

GT

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Haven't read all of the other posts, but.....

The flames may be interfering with the autofocus. Try getting her to lower the fire ring so that you can get a focus lock on her face. Maybe a flashlight on her face might help the focus lock.

bigtex2000 Loc: Arlington, TX

Thanks R.G. but I was shooting totally manual.....focus and all. I am going to try a flash using rear curtain sync and see if that helps!!

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Best of luck with that. If it comes out half as good as GT's shot, you'll be laughing.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Several points.

Rear curtain shutter makes absolutely no difference for this shot. You still get basically two exposures, one with flash and one without flash.

Use ISO 400. The Canon T3i starts losing dynamic range when you go higher than ISO 400, but the difference between 100 and 400 is very little. And dynamic range is your biggest problem in this effort.

Shoot in RAW, and when converting the raw data to an RGB image use the curves tool to bring up the brightness of the face. This makes a very big difference for this specific shot. With JPEG you can get about 1 fstop of useful adjustment, with RAW maybe 3 or 4. (The Canon T3i is somewhat limited. If you can borrow or rent a Nikon 800 it would help greatly.)

skidooman Loc: Minnesota

I'm not sure I understand where dynamic range would have anything to do with this shot. By placing the flash in rear/second curtain sync it fires at the end of the exposure, freezing your subject. The (long) exposure allows for the sparkler or fire to be exposed for. Since it needs some length of time for that to happen to be properly exposed for, if the flash fired at the beginning of the exposure, wouldn't that create an opportunity for the subject to become blurry by the end of the exposure?

Sign me "willing to learn".

This explains pretty well how and when to use second curtain sync, and is my understanding of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Py8pFjlx-g

Forgot to use quote reply, sorry 'bout that.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

The fire is very bright, the face is very dark. To record detail in both requires a fairly large dynamic range. The Canon T3i has a fairly low dynamic range for a modern digital camera.


Whether the flash fires at the beginning or at the end does not affect how much exposure there is from the open shutter due to natural light. It affects the timing of the exposures. Think about how it works if you have a light source moving in a straight line. The long shutter speed with show the light source as a streak of light. A flash at the start of that streak will show whatever is holding the light source. A flash in the middle of the shutter timing will show the object in the middle of the streak, and a flash at the end of the shutter timing will show the object at the distant end of the streak. That because the object is moving.

In the images being discussed, the "object" is a human that is not moving! It will be in essentally the same place no matter when the flash is fired. The flash can light the person to show them better and to freeze motion. If the flash is adjusted to cause the person's face to be just a bit less bright than the fire, it would be possible to get "correct exposure" for both the face and the fire. In fact though, you'd probably want the fire to be at least slightly blown out.


With all due respect, the video is mostly pretty good, but is very clearly wrong (and unclear at best) at 4:27 to 4:41. The idea that the exposure from the flash is on top, and thus hides, the blurred exposure previous to it, or that is reversed with front curtain shutter the blur is on top and thus visible... is not correct. Exposure is additive, and neither is "on top" or hides the other unless one exposure is brighter than the other. In this case the flash is brighter, and that is true regardless of when it fires.

bigtex2000 Loc: Arlington, TX

Okay....here we go....I was finally able to put some of the great suggestions together tonight and I will let the HOG be the judge on how well I was able to apply the new settings!!
iso 100, F8 and F11, 2.5 seconds, and second curtain sync flash.

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