Sippin' in Septemberby
BeckyKellermanComment by eschelar: I downloaded this and tried to do something with Photoshop. I was unable to get even a remotely appealing image...
I can only asusme that you are possibly fairly new to taking low-light pictures. My suggestion would be to take this pic one step at a time. I AM fairly new to taking pictures myself, but I find that I can usually get what I want by taking the picture one step at a time. This means one step for composition, one step for focus, and one step for lighting. These are probably the most important and most simple aspects of your pictures. There is actually a lot more to them than pointing and hitting the shutter button.
Here are the three steps as I see them with your pepsi can and the firelight.
Composition: Try to find a place that I could put the pepsi can where it will have some firelight and share the frame with a rock to bring in the camping feel. The pepsi can would take up enough of the frame that it could be considered a major element. Part of this step would be finding a suitable location for the camera where it could rest and allow me some consistency from shot to shot.
Focus: In this light, this would be a major issue. This would take maybe 5 or six test shots and I would need to either use Manual focus or AF lock, whatever is present in your camera.
Lighting: This is an balance between shutter speed and available light. This is a major challenge. Flash light on a pepsi can will create a series of harsh reflections. That's not necessarily bad, but it might necessitate having a longer exposure to allow the light from the fire to build up. If you use flash, you also have to remember that flash has a limited range (the above pic looks like you might be out of this range, using zoom, but I could be wrong). I would move in closer and put a little tissue or something over the flash to diffuse it. Others have had good success with using a plastic spoon. I would start experimenting with 3 second exposure with no flash to see how things looked naturally, then add the flash in after to see if it improved matters. This lighting choice would likely require the fire to be removed from the picture. If you wanted the fire in the picture as well, things get a lot more complicated.
Hope this is helpful to you. I'm not intending this to be a manual, nor as an indicator of what is right. I am merely trying to show you the type of thought process that needs to go into difficult lighting shots like this. If you want to get angry at me, feel free to vent in a PM.
