fireflies

DrPablo · 06-25-2008, 10:31 PM

How bright are they? I'd love to capture them flying around as I might capture star trails, but are they bright enough?

Pinholemaster · 06-25-2008, 10:50 PM

Not bright at all.

This same topic came up last year.

David A. Goldfarb · 06-25-2008, 10:51 PM

Here's your go-to guy for fireflies--

http://www.scottmcmahonphoto.com/gallery_fireflies.htm

He captures the fireflies and lets them wander around in a box with a sheet of 8x10" color transparency film.

keithwms · 06-25-2008, 11:16 PM

Paul, I had to go with quite long exposures (half sec or so) highish ISO (400 or so) and widish apertures (f/5.6 or so). Very few of the shots were keepers. I didn't shoot them in flight, that is going to be very hard; at least with stars the stars stay at infinity so DOF isn't an issue and you can go with wide aperture!

I suppose that I can't show you my results here, they were digital. I knew I'd be throwing away 95% of my shots so that's how I did it. Alright, look here and here if digital doesn't offend!

I used rear curtain synch flash to try to freeze the bodies and hope that they coincided with the blinks.

Small tip, if you breathe warmly on them they will glow in response. Yes, I put some serious efforts into this one summer a few years ago!

mooseontheloose · 06-26-2008, 04:27 PM

Hi Paul,

I think it's possible. In Japan firefly-viewing is very popular and I've seen pictures describing exactly what you want to do. My very bad attempt (which was the best of the lot) is seen here, on: http://photo.net/nature-photography-forum/00GoM3

As you can see I got the green squiggles but I really needed to use a (gelled) flash to illuminate the background. I think the longer the exposure, the better.

This was done in a park that had thousands and thousands of fireflies flying around but I didn't know enough about my film (and flash, as well) to be able to get something useful. Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll get a chance to photograph them again -- I'd love to see what you were able to capture.

Christopher Walrath · 06-26-2008, 07:30 PM

That would put them about 6c/ft2. Maybe even only 3. Very low light.