Photographing fire?

[LeperousDust]

I'm going to see the Beltane Fire Festival tonight, see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane_Fire_Festival) here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane_Fire_Festival) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHU8rWe7sv8).

It's held at night and lots of fire throwing and dancing, i'd like to capture a few nice pictures, but i know i'm obviously going have a lot of trouble ;D

I've got my trusty IXUS, which isn't really up to this job i know, but that's all i've got. I can put CHDK back on which gives me much better control over individual aspects, what i'm really after is some general advice and pointers to get me in the right direction, i don't really care if it doesn't work out i'd just rather be a little bit prepared and hope i get some nice photos :)

Cheers fellas!

[Mark]

My S3 didn't do so bad at the job. The problem you're likely to have (and I had it too) is that it'll be very easy to end up with the fire getting overexposed while everything else is underexposed. Experiment a bit and try using exposure compensation if you have that option.

[divine]

Very much depends what you want to achieve.

I would imagine your four basic setups would be:
Small aperture (High F number) and fast shutter speed - Frozen fire + blackness
Small aperture (High F number) and slow shutter speed - Fire trails + dim people
Large aperture (Small F number) and fast shutter speed - Frozen fire (very bright) + dim people
Large aperture (Small F number) and slow shutter speed - Very bright fire trails and well exposed but dim people.

If you have flash that can do rear/slow sync then try that out as you'll get some good frozen people with fire trails.

[LeperousDust]

Cheers i'll have a play then see what i can get away with, having difficulties even getting CHDK to play atm and i have 5 whole minutes to sort it out :D

[LeperousDust]

Dammit i give up, gotta go, and CHDK refuses to load more than once! :(

[LeperousDust]

Haha i never updated this, but this is because they were quite obviously disastrous at best, and i just didn't really bother after about 10 minutes :p.

I enjoyed myself instead and watched other people use real cameras for the job :D