MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,172
Show us your 4th of July pictures. We went to a parade in the morning and a fireworks show in the afternoon. The parade wasn't all that spectacular, so I'll spare you the pictures from that.
For the fireworks show, we got great seats. The display was being shot off from right next to my office building. My office is the 2nd from the top on the far left corner. The array of shiny things on the ground to the left is the set of fireworks ready for launch. My office would have been a stunning place from which to watch the show, but the closed down the building. Instead, they opened the parking garage of our main building, which is just across the lake (more of a pond, really).
Here is where we set up.
A lot of people lined the Waterway to watch the show. My photography had an area reserved for shooting show. I opted for the parking garage roof because I was able to take my family and some neighbors.
Here's a shot of the Waterway a little closer to show time. You can see someone back in the neighborhood firing off some fireworks in the background.
Here are some shots from the show itself. Notice that you can see the flames from the launch site. Last night was the first time I've had a perspective like that for a fireworks show.
The grand finale didn't photograph too well because it was just too bright and smoky, but it was spectacular to see, hear, and feel.
You can see all my shots from the evening here.
For the fireworks shots, I had the camera mounted on a tripod and used a remote shutter release. I turned off in-body noise reduction (dark frame subtraction). I used my 17-40mm f/4 lens because we were so close that I needed the wide end to capture some of the shots. I also like to shoot fireworks a little wide because it's hard to predict how high and wide they'll be. Most of the shots were taken at 17mm to 19mm (22mm to 25mm in 35mm equiv) and most were cropped from there.
I started the show with my ISO set to 100 and my aperture set to f/8. I used the bulb setting on my camera to control the shutter speed (typically between 1/2 to 10 seconds). I quickly determined (by looking at the LCD) that the shots were a little too bright, so I stopped down to f/11. There were a few times during the show with dimmer fireworks where I switched down as low as f/5, but almost all the keepers were at f/11.
I've found that with fireworks, you want to start with a rough guess based on distance. From there, you need to quickly make adjustments to suit the specifics of the situation. Keep your ISO pretty low and vary your aperture to get the desired results. I also try a large variety of shutter speeds.
Shoot a lot. I took close to 200 shots during the show in hopes of getting a few that I liked.
In post processing, the main things that I did were to boost the saturation to bring out the colors and to raise the black levels to filter out a of the dimly lit smoke. Because there was a strong, steady wind, smoke was not as big of a problem as it often is.
One more thing - hang something heavy from your tripod. The heavier your tripod, the more it will resist vibration. We got a lot of that from the firework blasts being so close. I hung my camera bag (with a couple of big, heavy lenses in it) from the hook on my tripod.
For the fireworks show, we got great seats. The display was being shot off from right next to my office building. My office is the 2nd from the top on the far left corner. The array of shiny things on the ground to the left is the set of fireworks ready for launch. My office would have been a stunning place from which to watch the show, but the closed down the building. Instead, they opened the parking garage of our main building, which is just across the lake (more of a pond, really).
Here is where we set up.
A lot of people lined the Waterway to watch the show. My photography had an area reserved for shooting show. I opted for the parking garage roof because I was able to take my family and some neighbors.
Here's a shot of the Waterway a little closer to show time. You can see someone back in the neighborhood firing off some fireworks in the background.
Here are some shots from the show itself. Notice that you can see the flames from the launch site. Last night was the first time I've had a perspective like that for a fireworks show.
The grand finale didn't photograph too well because it was just too bright and smoky, but it was spectacular to see, hear, and feel.
You can see all my shots from the evening here.
For the fireworks shots, I had the camera mounted on a tripod and used a remote shutter release. I turned off in-body noise reduction (dark frame subtraction). I used my 17-40mm f/4 lens because we were so close that I needed the wide end to capture some of the shots. I also like to shoot fireworks a little wide because it's hard to predict how high and wide they'll be. Most of the shots were taken at 17mm to 19mm (22mm to 25mm in 35mm equiv) and most were cropped from there.
I started the show with my ISO set to 100 and my aperture set to f/8. I used the bulb setting on my camera to control the shutter speed (typically between 1/2 to 10 seconds). I quickly determined (by looking at the LCD) that the shots were a little too bright, so I stopped down to f/11. There were a few times during the show with dimmer fireworks where I switched down as low as f/5, but almost all the keepers were at f/11.
I've found that with fireworks, you want to start with a rough guess based on distance. From there, you need to quickly make adjustments to suit the specifics of the situation. Keep your ISO pretty low and vary your aperture to get the desired results. I also try a large variety of shutter speeds.
Shoot a lot. I took close to 200 shots during the show in hopes of getting a few that I liked.
In post processing, the main things that I did were to boost the saturation to bring out the colors and to raise the black levels to filter out a of the dimly lit smoke. Because there was a strong, steady wind, smoke was not as big of a problem as it often is.
One more thing - hang something heavy from your tripod. The heavier your tripod, the more it will resist vibration. We got a lot of that from the firework blasts being so close. I hung my camera bag (with a couple of big, heavy lenses in it) from the hook on my tripod.
I wish I had some to share.
