Of all the images I have taken this one surprised me the most. As most avid photographers know, you do not know what you have captured until you examine the final image. Such is the case with this photograph. Fortunate for me I was in the right place at the right time. Having being seated at a front facing table at a Hawaiian Luau in Kona Hawaii, I was in position to take un obstructive photographs of the evening's entertainment.
Take photographs I did. Working my camera with various combinations of ISO's and shutter speeds in order to get a good capture of the action with the available light. As well the ever changing coloured lights that was used to enhance the various performances, also provided a challenge in the lighting and exposure department. Boy was I surprised when I examined the image several days later and discovered that I captured his tongue on fire!
I shot this photo with a Nikon D800 using a 24 to 120mm, f4 medium zoom lens set to a focal length of 82mm, with an aperture of f4 and a shutter speed of 1/125 sec. In order to achieve the desired results with the selected settings, considering the only available light source was provided by the torch, an ISO of 6400 was utilized. Due to the outstanding noise performance of the D800's FX sensor at this ISO setting, only a small amount of post production sharpening and noise reduction was performed in Adobe Lightroom 4.2. Needless to say I was very happy and pleasantly surprised with the final outcome!
