Taking a picture of a Christmas Tree

[private]

What is rear curtain sync flash? I am putting up my halloween tree after this weekend and I want to make sure I am prepared...

[ttosifa]

Your manual should have a description of how to do it for your camera. I recommend a Google search because there are a lot of wonderful pictures gotten from the technique.

[shutterbug_wannabe]

Pat,
I would use around f4 or 5.6 and get a correct exposure for the available light in the room (I would take the photo around 6-7 or maybe even 8 in the evening) with no room lights on. Put the camera on your tripod and see what shutter speed gives you correct exposure, I'm certain it will be at least a few seconds. I think this will give you what you are looking for. I can't wait to see the results!!

[imagesbyjk]

Of course you have to post shots of this tree. I've never seen a halloween tree!

[KodiakStar]

Originally Posted by imagesbyjk

Of course you have to post shots of this tree. I've never seen a halloween tree!

I'm glad I'm not the only one! And I agree, a tripod will be essential.

Perhaps working with two exposures, same settings, but one with the lights on, and the other with the lights off, then merging the two ?

[lputman]

I'm with Jeff and KodiaStar...I've got to see the end result, I've never seen a Halloween tree before.

[private]

its just a black tree - usually with orange lights - and some decorations....

[ttosifa]

Intrigued by this, I reread sections of a book by Lee Frost on Night and Low-Light Photography (an unremarkable book, IMO). Does have nice pictures though.

First, he has a section on cmas lights. For indoor cmas trees in particular, he recommends shooting after dusk and adding a small amount of room light that does not overwhelm the cmas lights.

Second, he does have a lot of photos with the star effect you are trying to avoid. He says nothing specifically about avoiding them (in fact, he often enhances them by adding a starburst filter). But studying the images, I am guessing that the star effect is most prominent when the direction of the light points to the sensor. To imagine what I am thinking, think of a streetlamp. If you are the street, the streetlamp throws light in many directions, including the direction of the camera. A light like this seems to have the star effect. Now imagine you are shooting the same street, but you are in a building far enough above the streetlight that the light is only being thrown downward relative to the camera. In the pictures I studied, the streetlight would not seem to generate a star effect, but rather a glowing effect.

The problem with cmas (ahem, halloween) lights is that this observation would seem to be somewhat useless. Of course, it might just be incorrect altogether!

[sk66]

You need to set up so that the lights on the tree are the brightest relative to ambient or fill light.
If they are only marginally brighter than the ambient light, (i.e. picture taken at dawn/dusk) you should be able to get both details of the tree and the lights bright. If the lights are much brighter than the ambient light(i.e. night/ curtains drawn), you will need to add some light (household/fill flash) to get detail in the tree itself.
Your problem is somewhat compounded by the orange color of the lights. With any daylight in the scene the orange lights will seem surprisingly dim to the camera. Using the night/curtains drawn environment and using some regular tungsten household lighting for fill may be the easiest. Tungsten doesn't register as brightly on camera as it does to the eye either.

[ni2sml]

To get the lights looking right, the tree will be underexposed. To get the tree details to show, the lights will be badly blown out. I'd expose for the tree lights to look right, then add suitable amounts of ambient or strobe (on slow sync if not shooting manual) to bring out detail in the tree branches and decorations.

Slow sync tells the camera to fire the flash, but expose as though the flash was off instead of overriding the shutter speed in program or aperture priority modes. I don't think it will make a difference if it's front or rear curtain slow sync since the subject is not moving. Front curtain fires the flash at the start of the exposure, rear fires it just before the shutter closes and is usually preferable for moving subjects.

This is from my (admittedly hazy!) memory of what I did before, I'll have to dig through my photos of Christmas Past to see how I went about doing this and what ended up looking best, I think I tried nearly every combination of settings I could think of!

Looking forward to seeing this Halloween Tree! I've heard of something like it before, there's a couple in this area who keep their tree up year-round, and redecorate it appropriately for whatever the season is. The local paper had an article about them earlier in the year. Neat idea.