Sunday, July 5, 2009

What did you do on Independence Day?

Yesterday, I slept late, then got up and mowed my lawn. Not too exciting, ya? but I had plans for the evening.

I have been going to Digital Photography School since OhCaptain turned me on to them. Recently they had a fireworks tutorial that I read here.

Last night, I went to see the local baseball team (AAA Memphis Redbirds) because they had fireworks after the game. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with my results, so I'll have to try again next year -- it's all part of the learning curve. Here are a few of the less dreadful ones.

This firework looks like a palm tree:


This is okay, but you need to click to enlarge to enjoy it:

One of the tips in the tutorial was to include people. I tried that in the next two:




One last shot:



I hope you had a fun Fourth of July.

[For those interested in the technical side: I shot in manual mode, and I turned off the auto-focus and the image stabilization. I used a tripod with a shutter release, and I took off my lens filter. I kept the ISO at 100 and used a range of F8 to F16. I used bulb setting, meaning I could hold the shutter open for as long as I liked. (I used different times from one to five to 15 seconds. In general, five seconds worked best.)]

6 comments:

  1. Good start. Who won the game?

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  2. Nice shots. I really like the last one! I don't know a thing about photography, but I would really like to learn. I'm going to check out that site. Thanks for the link.

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  3. Some very nice shots there. I was out too this weekend with the camera and hope to have some to post soon. I always wish there were more opportunities to shoot fireworks. It's a really fun process.

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  4. They're not bad. On some of them seems shutter speed was too slow. What camera do you use?

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  5. Just read the tutorial about shooting fireworks on the Digital Photography school. In my opinion, it's horribly wrong.

    I shot some fireworks on New Year's Eve on my dinky point and shoot (look under fireworks on VegasImages.blogspot.com).

    First of all - no tripod. ISO 800 -1600. I varied the exposure between Intelligent and Manual - mainly 1/8 -1/30 shutter speed.

    Hope this helps.

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  6. I have a point-and-shoot when I just want to stick it in my pocket or on a holster (a Nikon Cool-Pix cheapie).

    These shots were taken with my "good" camera, a Canon 40D with a 17-85 mm lens. Super camera, so I know the bad pictures were me.

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