More fireworks

[MCB]

I'm sure everyone and their dog is going to have fireworks pictures, so take a peek before you're sick of them. :) This was my first try at fireworks. I didn't realize how much the smoke lingers and gets in the way. Aside from being maybe a little out of focus, I'm pretty happy with the results.

[MCB]

And one more...

[mdenigris]

Great Job!!!

[Michaelmjc]

wow those are really awesome!

[TimSchroepfer]

Very fine work! What were your settings?

[MCB]

Very fine work! What were your settings?

Thanks for the kind comments. :)

I wasn't quite sure how long to expose for. I had heard that 4 seconds was ideal, but I've seen pictures that were as long as 10-15 second that looked great. I think the trick it so get a feeling for how fast the groups of rockets are to each other. For me, I was mostly trying to get one or two full rockets at a time. So I wanted the part with the rockets going up, exploding, then the sparks having a chance to drift a ways before the exposure ended. But frequently another rocket would just start to explode before my exposure ended, or my exposure would end just before the rocket I wanted to catch actually exploded. Having a remote that alows for bulb expsoure would really be ideal. Not having such a remote, I tried everything from 6 seconds to about 14 seconds.

I converted the files with the Adobe Raw converter. I increased the shadow setting a little to help make the sky more black in the longer exposures. And I decreased the exposure setting to -1 or -1.5 for most of them. That didn't affect the fireworks much at all, but really decreased the light from the lingering smoke.

So my exposure was between 6-14 seconds, F13, ISO 100 with a 22mm focal length on my Rebel XT kit lens. And of course I used a tripod and a wireless remote. I used the first few rockets to manually focus and adjust things so my field of view was appropriate. But you never know how high the next rocket might go... :)

Good luck to any of you trying to catch some tonight. :)

[jporter12]

I managed to catch some shots of tonight's fireworks and MAY post a few after I get some other shots processed from the event I shot yesteday. I know they aren't quite the caliber of what MCB has captured, but I would like some critiquing!

Thanks for the details of how you shot! I second the need for a remote that supports bulb exposure. I found myself shooting in various modes, and I ended up in manual, F5.6 (max at the zoom range I was using) and using the shutter button for bulb exposure. They are just OK for the conditions, but I am going to try stopping it down a bit and using a remote next time.

[tumb]

Nice shots! I'm working on a few of my own but these are gonna be hard to beat!