Frustrated..

Another fire: Loaded at 7:39; photo of flames at 7:54; first raking of coals the next morning at 5:22; 2nd raking of coals at 8:25; last coals at 9:16, stove still at 250 degrees, time to reload; next fire, started at 9:18, 13 hours and 40 minutes later.
You can see the inside of the stove stays clean.

 

Nice!
So what's your secret for taking good pictures?

 

Not sure. It's just a Panasonic dmc-zr1 point-and-shoot, and I haven't even taken the time to learn how to use what it has to offer. I just shoot in "IA mode" (it does everything,) or in the other mode where you can make more choices, I selected " standard" picture. That's what I did on this shot of the Buck this AM. Yeah, I was surprised it turned out that well, better than IA mode where the pics never look much like actual fire. It rendered the dirty glass pretty well, eh?

 

Yes, the Panasonic is a little know secret, has a great Leica lens at a fabulous price.

 

In order to capture specific flame moments, you need to use fairly high shutter speed, above 250 (1/250th of a second), so you need to take it off of manual and use Tv mode. That will provide a stop action of the flame. Otherwise you'll just get blurred flame as it moves around. The blurred flame can be a nice effect, but not so much if you are trying to capture color. You can use a low F-stop number like 5.6 or below as you don't need a lot of depth of field.

Then you also need to use the right "white balance" which for indoor lighting can be tricky. Usually Auto setting is as good as you'll get but if you have settings for that you can play with them. Then, depending on what if any post-processing application you use you can play with various exposure and saturation levels. What comes out of the camera in basic jpg form is really not near optimum for pics of flames, but many programs like Adobe Elements, Photoshop and many others allow you to make lots of after the photo enhancements to the basic picture.

It ain't easy initially, but it's worth playing with lot's of that those settings if you have some time. Flames, like running water in a brook change position and shape and color continuously ...so good luck.

Here's a quick one I took today while we get 24 inches of snow outside and the state of Massachusetts is shut down. Tough to catch anything looking like the beautiful in person light show you see.

 

If your glass is slightly dirty or hazy your camera will focus on it and back glare, if your camera manual focuses that helps.

 

Great capture!

 

Thanks, Yours caught my eye too, like you said above snap adjust snap adjust…..in time one will get on to it, a few hundred shots later for myself. Helps to be a true stove junky too don't it.

 

My wife watches in amusement as I set up tripod, cable release, ...very difficult to get good flame shots with lighting challenges it poses.

 

I messed around editing one and came up with this.

 

Pretty! What did you do while editing?

 

Nice Manny!....

 

So do the tree huggers!

 

The hdr filter did most of the work. Then I just played with the brightness & blurr & stuff.

 

Those shots really do a good job on the orange coals.