Fireflies?

[Sylvester Graham]

I just (no seriously, just) returned from an outing trying to photograph fireflies.
I found a location that has been under my nose for years and yielded more of the bugs then I have ever seen in my life. There must have been thousands. There were SO many I was able to focus off their light alone, which seemed like a vast bioluminescent carpet.

I had with me my tiny, $50 gossen "digisix" incident/reflective meter. The gully they were in was below the meter's capabilty, but I was able to take a reflective reading from the sky, about 4 seconds at f/5.6. I placed the sky on zone 7, although almost no sky was in the picture. Considering recipricoty, and with HP5 rated at 320 for PMK, I made my first exposure at a minute and thirty seconds, the meter read 30 at f/8 (or I guessed using the meter with the sky on zone 7), and bracketed a bit. Making a couple of exposures at 1 minute@5.6 and 30sec @ 2.8 (ok FINE, this was with my Hassy 500, but I might end up taking a 4X5 down there later)

I reasoned I probably would have only needed about a second exposure to portray their outrageous numbers. And on the ride back I began to panic that with exposures of longer than a minute, they wouldn't even show up at all!

Does anyone have any experience shooting fireflies? What's the shutter speed threshold where they start to not show up? The inverse square law must be involved here. I could take the time and test all this out, but I'm afraid they'll be gone by tomorrow! Plus I'm not sure I'm that intelligent, these bugs are about the trickiest things I can remember shooting. I made sure to write down the conditions; around 9:00PM, right before dark, 90% humidity, 73 degrees.
My goal is to capture not just the fireflies, but their enviroment as well.

Thanks for any help.
-Alex

[Walter Calahan]

Well may be if there were millions of fireflies.

I've never seen a landscape picture that shows them illuminated. But that doesn't mean it's not out there.

[Ben Chase]

Well may be if there were millions of fireflies.

I've never seen a landscape picture that shows them illuminated. But that doesn't mean it's not out there.

I found one or two in Google images, but this would be quite a difficult exposure no doubt.

If I were going to approach this problem, I'd probably try it as part of a long exposure shot, using two exposures. The first exposure would be at dusk, just to capture the subtle highlights of the landscape, and then a very long exposure to hopefully capture the fireflies.

Even still, the flash is so brief, you would almost have to hope that some of them were stationary and flashed multiple times in the same spot.

It could be quite an awesome image if it worked out right.

[tim atherton]

Greg Crewdson did a whole book of them (lovely little book), recently published - not LF - MF I seem to recall for some

Mind you, in these, most of their environment is failry dark

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/03/gregory-crewdsons-fireflies.html

http://www.skarstedt.com/index.php?mode=past&object_id=80
(very poor web reproduction of what's in the book)

[Oren Grad]

Talk about a challenging assignment...!

Tim, that's a nice post - sorry I missed it when you first put it up...

[tim atherton]

as to how Crewdson did it, I've no idea - but I think he spent two solitary months at his cabin getting over a bad break-up, so he had lots of energy to channel and lots of time to do it...!

[Walter Calahan]

Cool, now I've seen photographs with fireflies.

I agree with the double exposure technique, but could the reciprocity failure be over come with LF lenses? Afterall our lenses are traditionally not as wide in aperture as smaller formats. Could the dim light of the bug register at f/5.6 or f/8.0?

When looking at the images in Tim's posting it is clear to me that a very wide aperture was used.

Perhaps I can try this with a Kodak Aero-Ektar at f/2.5? We get tons of fireflies were I live. This could be fun.

[Ben Chase]

Cool, now I've seen photographs with fireflies.

I agree with the double exposure technique, but could the reciprocity failure be over come with LF lenses? Afterall our lenses are traditionally not as wide in aperture as smaller formats. Could the dim light of the bug register at f/5.6 or f/8.0?


That would certainly be the tricky part. Perhaps the first exposure would be at a smaller aperture (f22, f32 perhaps) for DOF in the landscape. For the 2nd, it might be worth trying to refocus (yay in the dark) on the plane with the most fireflies and then open up the aperture hard-core.

It looks like at least someone has done this - I'm sure it can be done again!

[Sylvester Graham]

I'd probably try it as part of a long exposure shot, using two exposures. The first exposure would be at dusk, just to capture the subtle highlights of the landscape, and then a very long exposure to hopefully capture the fireflies.


I was thinking the same thing as I went to bed. But do you mean a double exposure, or two, seperate exposures to be put together later in photoshop?

I would imagine keeping the sky in the shot is going to be exceedingly difficult, as it's probably going to blow out nomatter what I do, or at least register as a daytime sky. And giving any kind of minus development won't help the exposure time problem, as well as bring contrast in the field down next to nothing.

Crewdson's pictures are absolutely insane. I don't know if I'll ever get there. I'm using a hasselblad 500 for this (I was thinking about 4X5 but now that's out of the question, I hope that's ok) looks like I'll need to shoot wide open, and probably closer to dusk than in darkness. Anyhow I'll be going back tonight, and the next night, and the next night, and maybe the night after that, etc...

Maybe I'll post a frame or two of the results.

-Alex

[Ben Chase]

I was thinking the same thing as I went to bed. But do you mean a double exposure, or two, seperate exposures to be put together later in photoshop?


I meant a double exposure.

I'm a former RZ67 user (Mamiya), but I'm sure that the Hassy can do a double exposure just as easily.

[Walter Calahan]

I would under expose the first of the two exposures so the sky does not blow out, and the image has a hint of shadow detail. I'd want the first exposure to still look like it is night. Then when it is completely black expose for the fireflies.

You'd be better off not changing apertures so everything registers. If the wind blows to blow the trees or grass, I think the blur would added to the feeling of night.

[Brian Ellis]

I'd capture one firefly, put him in a jar or something like that, take him home, put the jar in a dark room, photograph him in there (he'll probably be stationary or at least not moving around very quickly in the jar). After you've made a successful photograph (it obviously would help if you used a digital camera) release the firefly, then use the rubber stamp tool in Photoshop to make as many of them as you want.

[Sylvester Graham]

then use the rubber stamp tool in Photoshop to make as many of them as you want.


Hmm, I don't know. Of those pictures I've seen of Crewdson's and some other examples, it seems like each insect leaves a seperate and distinct trail. Each one is different. They're more streams than dots, since the bugs are moving. I would think cloning the exact same flash over and over again would seem quite artificial

[Brian C. Miller]

I did a Google image search ("firefly insect"), and came up with a photo on someone's blog (http://www.highhopesgardens.com/Blogphotos/2006/firefly.jpg). Also, firefly in a jar (http://www.lightblog.com/member/premenopaws/?xjMsgID=13871).

[cyrus]

Put some dust specks on your negative, and say they're fire flies. Who'll know the difference?

[Donald Qualls]

I actually shot some fireflies the other night (on 35 mm). Very little resemblance to dust on the negative; the fireflies (at least around here, North Carolina) are pretty much always in motion when they flash, so they show up as streaks, not specks, and the streaks are often curved or bent. And they're *bright*; they make a reasonably well exposed, slightly greenish streak at f/16, even when the bug moves two or three feet (starting 20-30 feet from the camera) during the flash; the resulting streak is about as bright as the light pool under a streetlight after a 1 minute exposure...

[65Galaxie]

Donald, would you suggest f16 on bulb? What speed film? Tomorrow night I'm going to see an exhibit at a local library/museum that has the August National Geographic pictures on the Flinthills in Kansas and there is a firefly picture in that article. I believe it's the August issue. The photographer is local to the area and he's put together an exhibit with enlarged pictures. BTW: We call them lightning bugs here in Kansas.

[Donald Qualls]

I shot one and two minute exposures at f/16 on ISO 400 film, mostly because I recalled that as being a good exposure for street light illuminated night scenes. If you have a darker area (without street light) you might want to open up another stop or two (though doing so loses DOF); you're essentially going to record a black scene with the fireflies as streaks, anyway, unless there's a lit area in field, so use color film (that way you can at least pick out the light-cyan firefly light from the dust in the frame). And if you have film with better than average reciprocity characteristics (say, Velvia), you'll need to recalculate that exposure, which is correct for conventional B&W or color negative films that require 3 for 2 beyond one second (IOW, each stop of additional exposure time is triple, rather than double).