Advice sought: charity firewalk

[paul13walnut5]

N.B. Please only answer if you have direct personal experience of photographing fire-walks.

Toped in to take stills at a charity event as a favour, my gear is below.

No other situational light other than the charcoal. I have a 430ex and can borrow a second. I have loads of video lighting but don't want to ruin the ambience.

I also have a small manual ring-flash.

Not going to buy or hire anything else in as it's a favour.

Can anybody else suggest settings that havd worked for them, or even dhare some imsges.

I understand exposure and flash so have a rough idea how I might tackle it (slow shutter with flash, prhaps fire manually during exposure as subject passes my focus mark) but would really welcome the advice of anybody who has direct experience of this specific scenario.

For a full length portrait at tight distance my m and fast lens might be an option?

Thanks in advance, please provide images to show whats worked for you.

 

[wickidwombat]

while i havent shot any firewalks

but this is what i would do

I would think the 430 is enough, use a higher iso to compensate for the flashes lower power, off camera with a remote trigger would be best. consider gels... id do a few WB checks to start to see what works best. I would think you want the overall balance to be quite warm so you dont want to balance the colours and get rid of the warmth if anything you want to punch it up.

lets say they are walking from right to left i would position myself on the left side maybe 1/3rd the way in
have the 430 on a stand to camera left above head height pointing down, and aiming along the walk
this will probably give them some quite contrasty short lighting from the flash and the spooky lighting up from the coals. you dont want to overpower the light from the coals so i'd dial the flash power down try -2 ev to start and tweak it from there i would say to do this well its gonna be iso 3200 or iso 6400 and fast glass.
as you want the amient light to do most of the work and just bring in the speedlight to accentuate things not dominate it.

alternatively a video light on very low power might work and also on very low power it might not ruin the ambiance too much