How do you take a photo of flame?

[Raymond Lin]

I tried to take some photos of the gas fire in the kitchen today, may be a bit like this. Except the flame is never still, I was using manual, F/1.8, 1/60th and even 800ISO and it image was still coming out far too dark even with the kitchen light on. What I really want to do is an a photo of flames with a dark background, but any shutter speed lower than 1/250 makes the flames all blurr.......help.



http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3505/gassflammeia0.jpg

[Lin-z]

I would think you need a really fast shutter speed for that.

[unix04]

you didnt mention spot metering, but if you have that option, try spot metering against the flame, max out your ISO setting. try to keep shutter above 250, and set aperture accordingly. depending on your lens, 1.8 will give you shallow DOF and might cause only one part of the flame to come out in focus...so stop down if you can.

[Raymond Lin]

I have a 30D and a 50mm so I can do spot metering and F/1.8...will try it later.

[Raymond Lin]

ok, went against most things, realise no matter how fast I am going to shoot it, the flames is NEVER still from one split second to the next so I just wack the ISO to 100 and put the F/stop to F/5 and use spot metering and played with the time a little. Adjusted levels a little in PS.

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/4413/gas2pl5.jpg



p.s. god I wish i had a cable release........

[Rumjungle]

Hmm, I'd like to give that a try too. Here's what I did:
http://ct.pbase.com/o6/60/643160/1/70300710.fAkYCjuW.Flamecopy.jpg
Canon EOS 1D Mark II N, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
1/2s f/3.2 at 85.0mm iso100

It sure looks like we need to add some lighting of our own.

[StewartR]

ok, went against most things, realise no matter how fast I am going to shoot it, the flames is NEVER still from one split second to the next so I just wack the ISO to 100 and put the F/stop to F/5 and use spot metering and played with the time a little. Adjusted levels a little in PS.But forgot to crop out the 75% of the picture that is just black, apparently...:)

[deadpass]

*looks at stove and curses it for being electric*

[lostdoggy]

*looks at stove and curses it for being electric*

There is always candles and oil lamps

[SkipD]

ok, went against most things, realise no matter how fast I am going to shoot it, the flames is NEVER still from one split second to the next so I just wack the ISO to 100 and put the F/stop to F/5 and use spot metering and played with the time a little. Adjusted levels a little in PS.A suggestion: You might get a little better result with your stove burner if you both clean the burner thoroughly and use some sort of "walls" (possibly made of cardboard) around the burner to keep air movement to a minimum. Air currents in the room can blow the flames all over the place.