Fireworks/night pics

[handicap18]

Thanks for all of the great advise. I thought of trying a monopod but didn’t know if it would be an issue bringing it into the parks.

Also, Kyle, I have read that using high ISO, 800-1600, will produce a lot of noise. Have you seen this to be the case? Or, because of the dramatic contrast between the dark sky and the firework burst it’s not as noticeable?
Thanks, Donald.

The higher the ISO the more noise you will get. This is true with P&S and with dSLR's. It was/is also true with film, but was/is referred to as grain.

It is even more so an issue with P&S camera's. I believe it has to do with the sensor size. P&S camera's have a smaller digital sensor than dSLR's. There are many P&S camera's that don't go above ISO 400. Some of the new models go up to 800, but if you read reviews from the major review places like dpreview and steve's digicam's for example you find that they'll say don't bother with 800 because of the noise factor. However, in order to get the kind of shots people are looking for that don't want to use a tripod you need to use a high ISO to help capture as much light as possible. Unfortunately, because it is a night shot, noise will be a big factor.

If you do use a tripod with a P&S camera, you'll probably want to use ISO 50 or 100, though check the reviews, some P&S camera's are actually better at 200 than at 50. Right now, almost all dSLR's don't go below 100, some only go as low as 200, but all go up to at least 1600 and some up to 3200. Some are excellent at 1600 and others are just ok at 800 and bla at 1600.

A lot of it is subjective though. What is acceptable to some, to others it might be like scraping your nails on a chalkboard.

 

[Digital]

Thought I'd share my experience.

I was able get a tripod that fit in my backpack and I would just carry it around the parks with me. I only needed it for the firework shots (and an HDR shot or two) so it wasn't too much of a burden unless you count the actual weight of the backpack.

For most of mine I used a tripod and a remote. Set the camera to an ISO of 200 and bulb mode on my nikon d50. But on average the exposures seemed to be around 3 seconds. Example

I like how most of mine came out, but I wish I was in a better spot. Like for wishes I didn't know most of the action happened to the right of the castle from where I was setup. So most of the fireworks happened behind a rock for me. Also for the finale of illuminations I left the exposure open for almost 7 seconds and got a really bright image (Look Here to see what I mean).

I was able to try a hand held firework shoot to see if I could do it. And I quickly found out I would need a tripod, I'm not steady at all. The shots were very blurry. I also didn't try a higher ISO when I did the hand held experiment so that might work for some. Might be a good idea to try to get some lit jack o'lanterns and see if your photos come out sharp or blurry it being Halloween time and all. Hope this helps someone.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

and an HDR shot or two

For those that aren't hardcore photo techies, I believe he is using HDR as an abbreviation for "high dynamic range." These are shots where the difference between the brightest and darkest elements of the scene are so extreme that the camera cannot capture everything in one shot. With a tripod, you can keep the camera in one spot and take two pictures - one to capture the bright stuff and one to capture the dark stuff. You can use a program like Photoshop to merge the two pictures together giving you one picture that shows the dark stuff and then light stuff.

 

[FedJeff]

Wow thats a cool picture landmark thanks for sharing

 

[boBQuincy]

Thanks for all of the great advise. I thought of trying a monopod but didn’t know if it would be an issue bringing it into the parks.

My monopod (made from aluminum tent pole pieces) weighs 3 ounces and folds to about 12", but will support over 5 pounds. Hardly anyone at Disney even knows it's there until it is unfolded.

A monopod is no issue at WDW (and they don't seem to mind tripods either).