The Mid-Autumn Festival is an important festival celebrated by the Hong Kong people. Various festive events offer great shooting opportunities and subjects for photo lovers. Let’s check out some useful tips for photographing full moon and fire dragon dance - a traditional local custom - that will help you capture stunning festive photos with ease this Mid-Autumn festival!

Shoot with Telephoto Zoom Lens
The Moon is far away from us. Telephoto lenses with 300mm focal length or above are suggested if you want to capture the surface patterns of the Moon. Alternatively you can attach a 1.4x or 2x extender on a normal lens to achieve higher magnification (e.g. a 2x extender on a 200mm lens will result in 400mm focal length). We need to pay attention that a 2x extender will reduce the maximum aperture by 2 stops – i.e. a previously f/4 aperture will become f/8. When light is insufficient, there is also a chance that the lens cannot secure auto focus. In this case, manual focus with Live View Mode should be used.

Avoid Over Exposure by Using Manual Mode
Manual mode is suggested for photographing the Moon. If a semi-automatic or priority mode is used, the automatic metering performed by the camera will very likely be mistaken due to the darkness, thus adjusting to a larger aperture and resulting in an over exposed image. The Moon will appear like a bright sphere lack of details in the photo. On the contrary, Manual mode allows us to determine the aperture value and shutter speed. Suggested settings are 1/500s shutter speed, ISO 100 and f/5.6 aperture. Take a few shots to see the results, and adjust the settings according to the actual cloud amount and Moon’s altitude.

Create Mood with Different Compositions
As the Moon is far away from the Earth, it can only take up one third of the photo even with a telephoto lens. Thanks to the high resolution of 10-megapixel or above offered by today’s DSLR cameras, we can crop the image to enlarge the Moon’s proportion to make it more dominant. Besides, we can also make use of foreground objects to enrich the composition, resulting in Moon photos with an aesthetic or poetic touch.

Shoot with Large Aperture and Slow Shutter
Since the fire dragon dance has a lot of swings and twists and is in high motion, we suggest to use a lens features Hybrid IS for improved hand-held shooting stability, thus to deliver a sharp image result. If you want to capture a shining appearance of the two pearls, use a slow shutter speed of 1/4s or 1/8s and adjust the ISO to 3200 or 6400. When a flash is used, switch the camera to slow-sync mode and you can capture red light trails of incense as the dragon moves.

Use of “Zoom Burst” to Create Vigor
Making use of the characteristics of zoom lenses, “Zoom Burst” is a photography technique to turn the zoom ring quickly during a long exposure to create dynamic photo result with only the center subject staying still while all objects on the periphery become radiant lines. In the below photo, the photographer made good use of “Zoom Burst” to turn all objects other than the dragon and pearls into radiant lines, enlivening the photo with a great sense of chasing movement and time travel while guiding the eyes to the dragon.

Record the Fire Dragon Dance with Movie
Apart from photos, this festive event can also be well recorded with the camera’s built-in EOS Movie shooting function. As the dragon dances in the dark and the scenes are fast moving, we can shoot with a DSLR camera with a touch LCD monitor so that we can change the focus quickly and directly to ensure image sharpness. In addition, as the event is crowded with people, we can mount the camera on a monopod to shoot from a higher angle for a better view. Also adjust the angle of the LCD monitor for easy viewing to ensure that the subject is locked within the focus frame for accurate tracking and focus.

Shooting Location
The fire dragon dance passes through King Street, Sun Chun Street and Brown Street, and Wun Sha Street is the best shooting location among all these areas as the dragon stays longer at this spot so there is a higher chance for a nice capture. As the event is very popular and crowded with visitors, we advise you to arrive early to have a better observation of the environment and find yourself a good place to shoot.

Safety First
As the fire dragon keeps moving around, always put safety first when shooting to prevent getting burnt by the incense. Also remember to bring some clean cloths or wet/dry lens cleaning wipes to clean the camera and lens as there will be plenty of ashes in the air.