Chinese Lantern photography

Here in the midwest or at least lonely ol Kansas we don't get a lot of weddings that use Chinese Lanterns. There are some, yes but not that many. Maybe it has to do with the fact that in a lot of our surrounding area's it is illegal to do these. Either way we have yet to photograph a wedding that sends off a Chinese Lantern. We have done some sparkler photography but not the lanterns. So it goes with out saying that I was super excited when at a 4th of July family get together one of my cousins had one she was going to send off in memory of a couple of pets that had recently passed away. I often like to use family for experimenting photography wise. I got a few test shots before they lit it to get an idea of the settings, then I started shooting. As it turns out I nailed the settings for the most part on the camera. I will say that it was not fully pitch black out at the time they sent the lantern off, there was still a little light in the sky but I think that made it even better. Gave me a little more ambient light to work with at the same time providing a dark enough background for the lantern to really shine.

I've never done a blog post on how to. But here it is! The first how to from Highlights Studios Photography!

As I said it wasn't completely dark, this was July 4th at around 9pm central time so a really dark dusk time for us. Thus the settings, since we rent the really GOOD lenses for weddings we didn't have anything but the lens kit that came with our Nikon D90.
Here is the basic equipment I used for this shoot.
Nikon D7100
Nikon kit lens 18-105mm f3.5-5.6 (this just means that that as you change the focal length of the lens the f-stop changes automatically.)
Most of the images were shot at a focal length of 18mm. First off I think it's best that you have at least 2 people who are sending off the lantern. You need 1 person to hold the lantern and 1 person to light it.
The way I did it DOES require you to use fully manual settings.

Step 1: Set your dial to M (Manuel)
Settings for this picture were:
Focal length:18mm
f3.5
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 4000 (note: the higher the ISO the more grain you will get in your images. The better the camera the higher the ISO can go with little to no grain so each camera will differ greatly in the amount of grain).

Step 2: Light the lantern
For those that have never done a Chinese Lantern you light the entire square in the middle. My cousin had trouble figuring that part out at first.

Step 3: Rotate the lantern into the up position and hold to allow it to fill with hot air. This part takes a few minutes but that is perfect for taking pictures.
Camera settings: Same as above
Focal length: 18mm
f3.5
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 4000

Step 4: Instruct the subjects to hold it up (or pose them however you'd like while the lantern is filling with hot air).

Camera settings same as above. Notice this entire shoot I didn't need to change my setting hardly at all. All I did was move my body just a tad to get different angles.

Step 5: Be prepared for that moment of lift off! In this case my cousin actually said "it's ready to fly, it's pulling at our hands" so she gave us warning. Her daughter is the one in the center. This was her lantern in memory of her beloved horse and pet duck that passed away this year. You can see the name "Stoney" written on the side that is her horse.

Camera settings:
Focal length: 22mm
f3.8
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 4000

Step 6: Photograph in flight.
Camera settings:
Focal length: 58mm
f5
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 4000

The only settings that changed the entire shoot was the focal length and the f-stop. The f-stop changed because the focal length did.

Finally I did do some minor edits to these images. Although the images looked amazing right out of the camera. I used Adobe Lightroom 5 to add some contrast to make the sky a little darker and brighter blue. I reduced the image highlights and increased the image shadows (increasing the shadows helps to lighten the darker area's such as the front of the people). Those were very minor adjustments and just used to enhance the over all images.

So there you have it! Highlights Studios first how to!

If you enjoyed this post please take a moment to hop over to our website at http:highlightsstudioskc.com and show us some love!