Without my DSLR, and only 14 matches in the house, this was a nervous exercise. I used 2 matches to set the exposure, and I snapped 3 trying to light them...

Struck Match

Struck Match: 1/2000s; ƒ2.0; ISO 320

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Camera: Fujifilm X20 (compact digital)
Settings: 1/2000s; ƒ2.0; ISO 320
Levels slightly adjusted and cropped in Photoshop.

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I found this challenge a little tricky

As my DSLR recently died, and my only other digital camera is this Fujifilm compact zoom (which doesn't take the best photos btw). It does have manual settings, so you can tweak the shutter speed & aperture, although it's not very responsive, and is very limited with ISO settings above 100, and while I took this shot at a higher ISO of 320, I was lucky with the lighting to not have too many artefacts creep in.

The other challenge I faced when executing this concept was that I only had 14 matches left to begin with.

Three of them snapped on striking. I felt like a character in a movie trying to light a fire with the last single soggy match...I could have walked down to the shops & bought some more, but it's Sunday and I didn't want to, so I captured this shot with 4 matches left.

How I did it.

1. I made a small hole with a nail in a block of wood, in which I jammed the match ready for striking.
2. I mounted my camera on a tripod. I use a big old rock solid set of Manfroto legs with a ball & socket head.
3. I set the camera to it's highest frames per second setting, which is apparently 12fps (in practice it seems it's more like 4fps).
4. Composed the shot, which was lit with muted daylight straining through grey clouds & rain.
5. This last part was the trickiest: Strike the match. While taking the shot. On my own. With no cable release...

Basically I held the shutter release button down with one hand (set to 12fps), while at the same time striking the match head with the side of the box with the other hand, trying to use enough pressure to light it, but not so much as to move the match out of focus, or out of the frame. And as I only had 14 matches to work with, it as a nervous exercise.

It took me two matches to get the exposure right - left on auto exposure the "explosion" of the match being stuck blows the whole frame out to entire white. So several steps of compensation were needed, I snapped 3, and knocked 2 out of focus. In the end, this shot I've uploaded was from the second last match I used.

We had a blackout last week, I hope we don't have another one before I buy some more matches!