Benjamin Von Wong Goes Against Cheapo P&S. Makes It Shoot Beautiful Fire Bursts

When we feature Photographer Benjamin Von Wong it is usually when he aces a photoshoot. And usually he uses all sorts of fancy gear to take the shot. From underwater lights to super slo-mo cameras. But when Ben met Kai from DigitalRev he was thrown into the cold water and given an epicly cheap Point & Shoot to create an Epic fire lit portrait.

There were quite a few challenges that Ben went through and conquered and I thought it was worth doing a minute by minute break down of the video with regards to those challenges.

2:00 – “It has digital, but not manual“. Ben was looking for manual control (or at least shutter priority mode, so he would be able to freeze the fire ball. – and for that you need about 1/500 or higher shutter speeds). Solution – Go into scene mode and choose the fastest mode available.

2:52 – No way  to lock exposure on high shutter speed. Solution – shining a light into the camera and going half press to lock exposure. But

3:26 – focus got locked along with the exposure. Solution – locking the exposure against the sea as background and then walking half a circle crab style (to keep focus distance aligned).

4:45 – Location scouting – Finding a place where Ben can look up to the model to create a fine silhouette. Involves Ben making really weird digging style moves to claim the location

6:00 – No Fire torch  – Solution use a lighter….

6:23 – Gas pump broken. Solution – Kai to blow a pipe, I know it sounds weird but honestly, this is what they did. Favorite quote by Kai: “I want to know that the thing I am blowing is clean”

8:35 – Fire balls fly in the wind… Solution – realign the shoot.

Amazingly even with all this trouble the photos, edited in snapseed, turn out quite epic:

And here are the final shots

UPDATE: Ben has a complete breakdown how how doing a cheap camera challenge looks like from the photographer side here. Along with a video below:

[Pro Tog, Cheap Camera Challenge (Ben Von Wong) | DigitalRev & Ben von Wong]