Great Balls Of Fire

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

I spent almost the whole day today on the Civil War reenactment field.
Got a lot of shots, a lot of nice ones, but nothing came close this this one:

Great Balls Of Fire:

http://nik.smugmug.com/photos/107998886-L.jpg

More later (hopefully:-)

[Asher Kelman]

This is super, Nikolai!

It's a thrill to have a real war correspondent with us!

With what setup did you get this and do they give any warning or is all this going on with different canons at the same time?

Asher

[Nill Toulme]

Dang, Nikolai, how in the world did you catch that, and how did you meter it?

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

[scott kirkpatrick]

How long does the flame last, and how much warning do you have that the cannon is going to fire? I recently saw a shot of artillery in action (yes, firing north from immediately south of the Lebanese-Israel border) which caught the cloud of smoke at the muzzle and had the blurred shell in flight. The photog was a reservist who brought his Canon along on duty, and fired off bursts of shots starting a fraction of a second before the gun was fired. One of them caught the shell in flight.

scott

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

This is super, Nikolai!
It's a thrill to have a real war correspondent with us!
Thanks! I understand you gonna be one yourself today:-)


With what setup did you get this and do they give any warning or is all this going on with different canons at the same time?

Asher

Setup: Canon 30D, 70-200 IS f/2.8 + TCx1.4, ISO 3200, monopod (i.e. tripod used as monopod)

Warnings: none. You gotta watch closely. If you're lucky, you see the person in charge making "fire" jesture (dropping his raised arm). And even that does not guarantee capturing the balst, since the "triggerman" may delay, or the blast can happen in-between the frames. Also, sometimes they all go together, sometimes they do a "wave", sometimes they just fire at will...

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Dang, Nikolai, how in the world did you catch that, and how did you meter it?


It's a pure luck. I had my 30D on 3fps drive. I was already pointed to them and prefocused a bit (but not exactly) when they started what turned out to be "a firing wave" (each gun firing about half a second after another). So when they started I was able to reframe quickly and pressed the shutter. And I got lucky:-)

Metering was simple: ISO 3200, full open, aperture priority. The rest was done by the camera itself.. (Well, I postprocessed it a bit:-)

Thank you for the comment!:-)

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

How long does the flame last, and how much warning do you have that the cannon is going to fire? I recently saw a shot of artillery in action (yes, firing north from immediately south of the Lebanese-Israel border) which caught the cloud of smoke at the muzzle and had the blurred shell in flight. The photog was a reservist who brought his Canon along on duty, and fired off bursts of shots starting a fraction of a second before the gun was fired. One of them caught the shell in flight.

scott

The flame lasts a small fraction of a second. There is no warning, unless you watch for it AND can see the battery or gun commander (which is not always the case). However, if you do watch and do can see the person in charge, the method used by the reservist you've mentioned may work quite well. In fact, that's the only method that works, at least sometimes...

Thanks for looking!