If I'm casting a crab claw inside resin, do I need to coat it in glue first to keep it from turning translucent?
this is actually very difficult. At night time, it will be nearly impossible, because the flash reflects off of the reflective pads and pretty much ruins the photos. At day you want natural light and open apertures, and fairly fast shutter speeds to avoid motion blur. As for the nightime though I honeslty cant recomend anything except maybe a tripod because the flash won't be able to do anything.
I haven't shot any fire scenes since I went digital but I used to belong to a volunteer fire company. The film I used for fire scenes was Fugipress 800 and with very good results. I would imagine that you should be able to deal with the illumination just fine as many spotlights are used during a home fire to provide area illumination as well as the illumination of the fire itself if it's involved. Being on location doesn't mean you should enter a smoking building however in order to get good shots of the firefighters coming out or going in. The noxious (and toxic) smoke off modern furnishings and carpets is deadly which is why these guys use SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus). I would recommend not using any flash because of the reflective materials found on equipment, helmets and the firefighter bunker gear. Open your aperture up no less than f/8 if you need some dof (if appropriately illuminated) and using ISO 800. Any higher ISO for the D200 may get noisy but wider apertures work well too. Some of my best shots were silhouettes of the firefighters against the building engulfed in flames. In fact, I used to sell them to the local papers and make a pretty decent living running around catching news. Now, I am a staff photojournalist and do a lot of other things. There's a lot of money to be made in what you are doing think about the opportunities. ..
