Playing with fire
Whatever the question, braai is the answer for most South Africans. Even when you are not camping and just visiting friends, we celebrate the occasion by having a braai or at least build a fire in the boma area. To capture these moments, you need to stabilise your camera on a beanbag or tripod, and then adjust your settings. I use the live view option to get the exact light I want in the image.
To freeze the strange curls and twists and loose tongues of flames licking the air, you need a fast shutter speed of around 1/1000s. A wide-open aperture around F/4 and a high ISO (around 2000) will compensate for the fast shutter speed. For this I set my camera on high continuous shooting, and capture bursts of ten photos at a time, with each photo looking different.
If you want the flames in surreal motion, the shutter speed will need to be slow, at around 4 seconds. This will let in a lot of light so you can