5th of July Fireworks

MrBook2

No, the date is correct. The fireworks here in Lansing, MI were postponed due to rain on the 4th.

I finally broke down and bought a Nikon D70 last week, and these are my first posted pictures from it (using the 18-70 Nikkor kit lens). I made a real rookie mistake when I was setting up; there were several street lights that are visible in my uncropped images. These gave me some terrible reflections from my optics. You can see it in the lower right hand corner of the second image. It isn't too terrible, but I do find it distracting. It was overcast and the wind was light, so there is quite a bit of smoke in a lot of my pictures, but even given these problems, I think several turned out ok.







There are a few more shots on my smugmug page (see link below).

--Aaron

Nir

Aaron,

The shots are great and congrats on the new cam!

MrBook2

Nir wrote:

Aaron,

The shots are great and congrats on the new cam!

Thanks! I love the D70. I upgraded from a Sony f717, which was a great camera in its own right. The D70 has opened up whole new realms of possibilities.

Happy shooting!

--Aaron

Netgarden

Hi Aaron, I think I learn something new everytime I get out there to shoot. I probably wouldnt have noticed them if you hadnt mentioned it though. Enjoy that new camera.

I found a few of my daytime shots with reflections from a UV filter. Just when I get all the accessories, then I don't like them! lol

MrBook2 wrote:

Thanks! I love the D70. I upgraded from a Sony f717, which was a great camera in its own right. The D70 has opened up whole new realms of possibilities.

Happy shooting!

--Aaron

MrBook2

Netgarden wrote:

Hi Aaron, I think I learn something new everytime I get out there to shoot. I probably wouldnt have noticed them if you hadnt mentioned it though. Enjoy that new camera.

I found a few of my daytime shots with reflections from a UV filter. Just when I get all the accessories, then I don't like them! lol

But now that I have pointed them out, can you not help but see them everytime? Man, it can be very frustrating but I suppose I am overly critical of my own photographs. I suspect that is why I post so few of them here. The fact is that I have now taken more than 1300 pictures with my new D70 and I have posted 2 of them here. (Why so many in only a week? Well, I have been to an air show/balloon festival, a zoo, and a fireworks display. It was a busy weekend...) I have a few that I am doing some post work on that should make it up here soon. I have a pretty sweet shot of an F-15 that I took with a Nikkor 70-200mm VR lens that a reporter let me borrow for about 5 minutes. Hmm, I seem to have gotten off on a tangent there...

Are you familiar with a guy named Mike Johnston? He has a column called the Sunday Morning Photographer. I think it is a good column and you can read it (including the full archive) here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sunday1.shtml
He had an interesting one a while back arguing against UV filters. You can find that one here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-feb-05.shtml
I think I am beginning to agree with him. I don't think that my UV filter caused this particular issue, but I doubt it helped.

--Aaron