Question
I am looking for advice on how to shoot a massive bonfire to produce an HDR image. My school has a massive bonfire every year for homecoming — it is 30+ ft. tall. I have been shooting and HDRing my photos for a year now and have gotten decent results during daytime shooting, but I have never really taken an HDR shot at night.
I have a tripod so I am not worried about getting an image; I am more concerned with the best way to get the series of images for an HDR'd image. Should I take one RAW and manipulate it into five JPEGs during post, or shoot five shots that night? Also, I would like to get as crisp an image as possible of the flames. Are crisp flames a pipe dream?
Just in case this helps: I will be shooting with a Sony a33, which is pretty good in low light, and either a 50mm/f1.8 or a 28mm/f2.8. All mounted on a tripod.
The fire is pretty bright during the initial burn, so that should help cut down my exposure time.
What tips do you have for me?
Answer
Pulling out multiple JPEGs from a single RAW file always results in lower quality HDRs than the one done with bracketed RAWs. Specially the dark parts of your image will show noticeable noise. On the other hand, bracketed shots require static scene which isn't the case for you but I believe is the right thing to do. If I were you I'd shoot as much bracketed shots as possible and try playing around to get the best outcome. Flame shots at night typically ends up requiring 1/30-1/40 (considering you already have some fast enough lenses) shutters which will not stop the action to a full stop but wont be bad either.
Worst case, when merged, resulting HDR will show some crowd movements and a dreamy flame, which isn't bad either, in fact it will add some interest in the photo ;)
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