Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico Help!

[ElvisG]

I'm going to the balloon fiesta. So, I was wondering if anyone has been there, and if so, how do you setup your camera for the early morning light-offs.

I will be using the 40D.

[PacAce]

I haven't done any early morning light-offs but have done early evening light offs. What I basically did was set my camera to manual mode, metered the balloon while the flame was on and took a test shot. I then tweaked the exposure to get a good lighting of the balloon and the flame. Just watch the background lighting (sky) because when shooting in the morning, daylight will be getting brighter as the minutes go by, unlike evening when it gets darker, and you can easily end up overexposing the scene.