Photo Skills for Fire Investigators
Welcome to the Fire Photog Blog! Here you'll find articles, tips and tricks to help you make better fire scene images. The camera is the fire investigator's most important documentation tool. I'm here to help you get the most out of it.
-Darren W.
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Exposure Compensation
Have you ever noticed that whenever you take a picture of a document it comes out dark? Have you ever noticed that your images of black fire debris are often gray or silver looking? It's because... [Read More]
I'm about to do something very uncharacteristic. I'm going to write things...and then post those things on the internet. [Read More]
In the last post, I wrote that although the camera's automatic settings will usually give you a good exposure, they may not give you the exposure you want for quality forensic work. To understand why, it’s helpful to know... [Read More]
Photographers often use shallow depth of field to isolate a subject from the background. The technique draws attention to the main subject and tells the viewer what is important in the image. However, when we photograph a fire scene, the entire scene is important... [Read More]
As we discussed in the post on the Exposure Triangle, the camera’s shutter speed setting controls the amount of light in our exposure by changing the amount of time that the camera shutter stays open...[Read More]
In this, our last post in the series on the exposure triangle, we'll take a closer look at the ISO setting, what it does for our exposures, and how it can affect our fire scene images. The term ISO stands for... [Read More]
The camera's shooting mode is one of the most important camera settings. In this post we'll look at the most common shooting modes for forensic and investigative work... [Read More]
Some zoom lenses are creepy. It's not their fault really. It's just how they're made. Other lenses start out well mannered, behaving as they should. But over time... [Read More]
Regardless of what shooting mode we use, we rely on the camera’s built-in light meter to achieve proper exposure. In Manual mode, we can look... [Read More]
Histograms & Blinkies
Histograms and blinkies are exposure tools we can use in the field to quickly review a photo we’ve just taken to make sure we’re getting good exposure. They allow us to tell at a glance if we’ve hit the Goldilocks zone — not too dark, not too bright — just right. [Read More]
Have you ever noticed that whenever you take a picture of a document it comes out dark? Have you ever noticed that your images of black fire debris are often gray or silver looking? It's because... [Read More]