candles??

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mel
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I recently took a photo of my nephew blowing out the candles on his cake.....the pic was a disaster!! :-(.....

any tips on what settings to have the camera on when taking photos of candles in the dark? and would i need flash or not? :)
 
mellie2048
 
A filter is a extra piece of glass that you can attach to the front of your lens, for different effects, but it can caused certain issues with reflection of the light :(

Looking at the settings of this photo it was a 2 second exposure which is way too long for such a photo, my suggestion would be to use a little flash and try light up your subject and then a shutter speed of about 1/50 of a second to bring a little bit of ambient light
 
[IM G]http://i1072.photobucket.com/albums/w363/mellie2048/IMG_0992.jpg[/IMG]

i took the address of your picture and put image tags around it like here but so it posts the text ive put spaces in the start of the tag if you tak the space out it will post the picture like in my post:D

as above if you have a filter you would be able to unscrew it off the front of your lens have a look at the front you should see a thread next to the glass
 
Really can't put my finger on what's happened, looks like flare, looks like second curtain, looks like a multiple exposure
Looks like an aura!
Just weird. Im guessing that your flash fired at the start of the two seconds, and exposed the scene then you moved about after the flash and got the weird glow and light trails.
Or your camera set itself for two seconds then someone else's camera went off.
He don't look very happy about that cake? Maybe its all the cameras In his face, i used to hate having my photo taken lol
 
Its probably the remains of the light from the candles and the smoke. Presumeably as the shutter was fired, the candles were lit, and up by his face. In the two seconds, the candles were blown out, the cake lowered (hence the light trail) and the smoke produced.
 
i was the only one taking photos!! so no other flashes were going off...

yes Tom i think u were right as i had it on manual mode, and it was completely dark, so i set it to something like 1/25 i think!....

and yes i think the flash went off as he blew the candles or just after i dont know :-(....

so then how can only use a 'little' flash.....hhmm sorry guys im just a beginner but didnt know you could set the flash to use less or more??

and thank you to all of you for your advice here! :)

x
 
Quite a bit of guesswork here, but, looking at the shooting data, it suggests you were in `Exposure Mode 0`which I think is an auto setting rather than manual. If this is the case then the meter may well have picked a two second exposure if the room was pretty dark when you pushed the shutter. The low light would have caused the flash to fire, hence most stuff being more-or-less properly exposed. But, the flash only lasts around 1/1,000th of a second - and with the shutter remaining open for two seconds, the background (`ambient`) light has also hit the sensor, causing those blurs. Because the ambient light was low, they haven't made much impression.

Odd that there is no sign of flame from the candles - had he blown when you hit the shutter, perhaps?

Have a look in the manual for how to reduce the flash output, and look up `second curtain sync` as well. Then practice! This is a really tough shot to get right, so don't think it's just you, Mel.
 
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