Anybody Photograph Fireflies?

[erikzen]

Has anyone ever successfully taken a shot of a firefly glowing? The other night I had my camera out in the early evening to take some photos of the lillies blooming in my front yard. As I was shooting with a tripod at the time I wondered if I could capture the fireflies that were lighting up.

It was dusk. I had the camera on the tripod and tried various shutter speeds ranging from 8 to 15 seconds. I tried various apertures from 8 down to 22. I figured if I had the lens open while a firefly flew into my field of view while the shutter was open I'd capture the light.

After about 30 attempts of shooting and praying for a firefly to light up in front of the camera I finally gave up. A few times they crossed in front of my lens but none of my shots captured a lighted firefly.

Andybod ever do this and if so, how did you do it?

[Loupey]

I thought about it before but haven't tried it yet.

My thoughts are: 1) pick out an area that has an interesting treeline so that you don't just get a black image with spots/streaks, 2) use a really long exposure to record as many "bursts" as possible (in the range of a couple minutes), and 3) shoot during a full moon so that some of the foreground detail will show up.

Not sure if the streaks caused by the flying fireflies would detract from the image verses the pinpoint glows that exists only in the mind's eye. That's for you to find out

[Anbesol]

I gave it a more cursory, spur of the moment attempt, I tried with handheld limitations I had no tripod on me, I had no luck either. I thought about giving it a more serious try but I can't imagine a conceivable way to expose that sort of light. Its very subtle so it doesn't even compare against the long exposed moonlight, so those 3 second long exposures, noticing tiny fraction second bursts of tiny light, don't really mean much to the exposure. And yet, how much firefly can you possibly capture in a fraction of a second?

I think I'll pursue this more tomorrow, damn the conditions. I think the subtlety of the firefly needs to be accurately balanced to ambient light, then finding the exposure sweet spot.... I am pretty sure I won't figure it out sometime this year.

Plz post more info about your attempts at these, if you do succeed please tell us how.

[erikzen]

I'm not exactly sure what the season is for fireflies or know too much about their behavior. It seems to me that in NY after July the population really seems to diminish. I've also noticed that they are most active around dusk but once it is completely dark they don't seem to be around.

There's a full moon in about 10 days so I'll give that a shot too.

I'm also thinking a hand held shot, perfectly timed, might work also.

[Loupey]

There's a full moon in about 10 days so I'll give that a shot too.

As Anbesol implied, you may want to shoot at different moon phases so as to get the right balance and not just during full moon.

You're right about them being most active at dusk. I haven't seen many fireflies at all since about the 3rd week of June.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.