*Official Photography Thread* (56k warning)

[NAiL05]

My more recent ones these suck I just wanted to retest my night shooting. All shot at 800 ISO and about 1.3s Shutter speed. Not the greatest shots but too lazy to drive 3 blocks to get good shots of real fireworks lol. This was at the complex with people goin off all night long sorry about the building in the way.

[stormblkcb7]

Umm Nelson I would suggest to shoot fireworks at 100 iso.

[NAiL05]

lol 800 works for me as of now. I was trying to get some pictures further down the street and never changed the ISO since it was so dark. It worked pretty well though other than the buildings and stuff in the way.

[stormblkcb7]

Tips for shooting fireworks

With all these firework posts, I'd like to fill in with a few tips from POTN... These are not my suggestions, but I do follow their recommendations...

1st SET OF TIPS:
1) I was very close to the action. I used the short end of my 28-75 on my 20D and wished I could go wider. Composition is the hardest part since you can’t predict exactly where each shell will be, or how big. Give yourself plenty of cropping room.

2) Bring a small flashlight (torch) to help with making camera adjustments in the dark.

3) Use your largest CF card, and bring spares. I took 156 shots in 21 minutes.

4) Show up early to get a good seat. Try to stay upwind if possible, so the smoke blows away from you.

5) Prefocus on a distant building or tree top, then switch the lens to manual focus and leave it alone. With most lenses if you change the zoom you’ll throw it out of focus and you’ll need to repeat the process, so avoid zooming if you can.

6) Bring a lawn chair. Setup the tripod directly over your chair so you can look up at the camera comfortably.

7) Set the shutter speed to BULB mode so you can hold the shutter open at will with the cable.

8 ) I used f/8 and ISO 100. Interestingly, my wife used f/32 and her shots don’t look a whole lot different.

9) I had the camera in vertical orientation. The altitude of each shot will vary more than the horizontal location, so this makes composition easier.

10) Set up your tripod so the vertical angle is locked but the swivel adjustment is loose. This will allow you to aim each shot easily.

11) Check composition with the LCD review and adjust the vertical angle as needed (this is easier than looking through the viewfinder).

12) One more thing I just thought of - If you normally use a UV filter, take it off. Small, intense light sources have been known to cause ghosting with UV filters (especially cheap ones).

My strategy from that point was to try to follow each ascending bomb by swiveling the camera, then open the shutter just before the shell exploded. Sometimes I was a little late, which creates a different look but not necessarily worse.

Hold the shutter open as long as you want. Most of my shots were from 2 to 6 seconds. The most interesting shots will have 2 or 3 shells exploding in a single image. Keeping it open too long usually just makes a mess, but by all means, experiment with different exposure durations.


2nd SET OF TIPS:
Where to Stand

Before the fireworks start, find out where the fireworks will be taking place, and scout around the area. Here are the best kinds of locations:

Good: An unobstructed view of the sky, upwind of the action. Make sure there are no buildings or trees in the way. Look for an elevated position so you don't have the heads of the people in front of you in the shot. Why upwind? You don't want the smoke blowing towards you because it can block the view--and do you really want to smell that?

Better: An unobstructed view with water. A body of water can result in interesting reflections of the fireworks.

Best: An unobstructed view with a landmark. Fireworks blazing against the profile of a well-known (and hopefully well lit) building or natural landmark can add a point of interest (and possibly salability) to your image.
Exposure tips

Aperture: Most photographers use ISO 100 and an aperture of between f/8 and f/16. The smaller aperture intensifies the colors of the fireworks and prevents overexposure. Experiment and see how the different aperture setting changes the look of your image.

Shutter speed: Use your camera's "B" (bulb) setting. Start your exposure at the moment the burst begins, and end it when the burst reaches its peak. How long is long enough? For a single blast, a second or two should be sufficient.

Some photographers leave their camera on B and block the lens until there's a burst, and repeating the process over several bursts. This results in a multiple exposure that can fill the frame with fireworks.

Color balance: Daylight is fine, but if you have lit buildings you should set color balance based on how they are lit.

What about auto-everything cameras?

If your camera lacks manual settings, you can still get reasonably good fireworks shots. Set it to Landscape mode so it focuses on infinity. Disable the flash. Start the exposure before a blast if possible and the lens will remain open longer.

To reduce lag time (a delay between when you press the shutter release and the camera takes the picture), keep your finger on the shutter release, pressing it halfway down.

Reducing noise

If your camera has a noise reduction feature, by all means use it. The long exposures are bound to overheat the image sensor, which results in digital artifacts ("noise") that look a bit like grain in your photograph. The black sky will look muddy or worse. There is also software and there are techniques for reducing grain in Photoshop--but that's another story.

Good luck to all who are shooting tomorrow night... Be safe out there!!! Peace...

- airbutchie :up:

[Law Grandeur]

bored one day so a buddy and I made a seamless backdrop. Seamless backdrop + 2 flashes + d40 = cool stuff




Oh and yes my nails are that long. gotta keep the vampire status up haha!

[fatboy1185]

sick!! please post more!

[samuri88]

check out my photos
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthre...=1#post1551623

[lowakkord]

[samuri88]

bro how do you do that...its nice work i like the pic^2nd one..its like you made the car pop out like that..did you put the camera in AF mode

[stormblkcb7]

He probably used selective focus, and had it focused on the front end to make it POP like you said.

[nghtrydr23]

bro how do you do that...its nice work i like the pic^2nd one..its like you made the car pop out like that..did you put the camera in AF mode

the picture looks somewhat altered with photoshop. however you can achieve this by opening the aperature larger

[samuri88]

He probably used selective focus, and had it focused on the front end to make it POP like you said.

the picture looks somewhat altered with photoshop. however you can achieve this by opening the aperature larger

X2 opening the aperature up will narrow your focus range which will in turn blur anything thats not in the focus range.

thanks you guys for the tip
i goin 2 try it out now and load it up

[zelseman]

fatboy, those fireworks pics arent bad at all. looks good.

[zelseman]

Here are a few recent ones:

[Dinner_Time]

Some from the beach in Grand Bend, Ontario.