Playing with Orange Fire

LeeAnn's Colour Challenge - Day 28 - Orange

One of my photo magazines (Digital Photo Dec 2013) had this "easy" technique for capturing the moment a match head sparks into life. The accompanying photo in the mag had some wonderfully orange hues, so I thought I'd give it a go for today's challenge. As always with these things, its not as easy as they say, and I worked my way through many matches before getting a passible shot :)

If you want to give it a go, mount your DSLR camera on a tripod with a macro lens, and focus on a matchstick stuck into a blob of bluetack. Set your camera to ISO100, Manual, f/5.6 shutter 1/4000s or higher. Also set the drive mode for continuous shooting at the highest speed.

Strike a second match and use it to light the first, whipping it away as soon as the first starts to spark. At the same time start shooting - a remote release is recommended. Check the results to see if you have caught the moment of ignition.

I struggled with getting the match to light before the buffer filled up, and the shots were a touch under exposed. I might try again sometime, and shoot JPEG rather than Raw to keep the fps rate up, and adjust the exposure - but for a first attempt I'm not too displeased with the results