Fireworks How-to!

i_worship_the_King

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-photograph-fireworks/

Link I located today, lots of great tips!

Enjoy! :barb

pathfinder

Tripod, cable release, f8 or f11 at ISO 100 to start, manual focus, Manual Mode exposure of 1/4 to a few seconds should get everyone started.

Shoot a few frames and then look at the histogram, and adjust the exposure to keep the highlights from blowing out.

Lets see what folks come up with this Friday. Happy Independence Day!

trippy64

Here is the best shot i got.
I tried fixing them, but i am new to capture software, so it is still a work in progress.

pathfinder

Hi Bill

I think that is pretty good. Having water in the foreground helps so much.

The downside is that bridge we were on vibrated when cars went across it, so some shots were lost to that. I din't really appreciate that at the time and yet, thinking about it, I should have suspected as much. I was just excited to be there I think. But I think I got a couple frames. The finale was the best part of the show, that's for certain.

I may have used a stronger curve to help drive my skies to black. What were your shutter speeds? Mine ran from 4-8 seconds usually, at f5.6 to f8, ISO 100. With a D-70 your ISO was probably 200, I don't think a D-70 goes as low as 100.

Here are a couple of mine

trippy64

I shot at F8 (as instructed) and I was at 2, 4 and 8 seconds shutter speed, ISO 200 (D70 doesn't og to 100 it seems), depending on the action. I only had a couple of OOF, they were more just blown out with the 8 second ones, or there was ghosts from hitting the shutter a second too slow and catching the last bit of a previous burst. I am trying to lighten the water part, but keep the sky dark, and haven't figured out how to seperate the picture to do that. I need software courses i guess.

Just saw your shots, you did get some good ones!!

Fortuna favet fatuis

pathfinder

With ISO 200, f11 is equivalent to f8 for ISO 100.

To lighten the water, separately from the background, will require a selection, and in this image the easiest selection is with a Quick Mask. Hit the Q key to bring up Quick Mask mode in Photoshop, hit the D key to set the foreground color to black, hit the B key and choose a very soft brush at 100% opacity in Normal blending mode. Paint over the image in the area you want to edit separately, and, as you paint, the image will be colored pink in the areas you have selected. Once you have all the area you want to be affected, hit Q again to exit the Quick Mask mode, and the dancing ants will outline the area selected. Now, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves and a box will come up to allow you to name the adjustment layer - click OK, and then the Curves dialog box pops up. Alter the curve as needed to achieve the lighter or darker areas as in the foreground water, and click OK again.


You can darken the background fireworks also by reselecting the area selected in Quick Mask, inverting it, and doing a second curve for the fireworks itself.

Your image will go from this to this

[imgl]http://Pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/326109648_ukEGB-XL.jpg[/imgl] [imgr]http://Pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/326226489_wuhZQ-XL.jpg[/imgr]
































More of my shots can be seen here

bendruckerphoto

The biggest mistake made is choosing relatively short shutter speeds. I tend to set exposure for between 2-8 seconds. Bulb mode is the best. Get a cable release. When you hear a group of fireworks go up, press the release. Let it go when you get a satisfactory number of bursts. Since everything else is dark and the fireworks you are capturing is essentially just light, you really don't have to worry about exposure. It's unlikely you will blow any highlights with a reasonable exposure.

pathfinder

Ben,

That is exactly what I found, and my shutter speeds ranged from 4 to 10 seconds, depending on how fast the mortars were firing.

Toward the end of the display in the finale, I began to close the aperture from f8 more like f11 since there was so much more light in the sky. Shooting over water helps with more reflected light in the foreground. I found it easy to have blown highlights with multiple bright displays in the frame. When RAW processing my images, I used a large amount of Recovery in Adobe RAW converter to salvage areas of blown highlights even when the exposure was correct because any less would have been significantly underexposed. One thing I would do differently is use a prime lens - maybe an 85mm or a 50mm on my 5D - I used my 24-105 L which I regard highly, but it is known to be prone to flare, and that is true for fireworks also. A simpler prime might have had less flare.

Some of my fireworks shots can be seen here

KED

i_worship_the_King wrote:

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-photograph-fireworks/

Link I located today, lots of great tips!

Enjoy!

I followed this recipe on Friday, and got some really nice conventional shots (albeit without a really nice water foreground), such as the following:



But the unforeseen results were even more interesting, at least to me:

pathfinder

Very interesting.

Were you shooting from a bridge also?:D

KED

pathfinder wrote:

Very interesting.

Were you shooting from a bridge also?:D

If you are addressing this to me, quite the contrary. I was on a golf course sitting on my butt with my tripod fully un-extended. Great venue though, especially since it started raining just at fireworks time and I was able to set up under the edge of a food tent. I do have some human silhouettes in a couple of shots, but they are easily cropped out or in a couple of cases provide some valuable perspective.

i_worship_the_King

Lovely shots everyone! Unfortunately the conference let out about 1.5 hours late and I had to leave the camera in the room just to see the fireworks.

Fortunately they were great ones!

Hope everyone enjoyed the blessed country we live in!

Balls Casten

I lost so many shots that were out of focus.
Thank god for digital .. never would have taken a single shot had I still been using film.

DaC

Thanks for the help
I tried fireworks for the first time this past 4th. Thanks to all the old hands for the advise and the "how to" links. My setup was a little rushed so I had to make the Washington Monument streight using NX2.

General camera info: D70s, Nikon 17-55 (at 55mm), JPEG large, manual mode, auto white balance,

The first shots I was a little shy with the settings:
f9, 4/10 sec,


looking at the shots, I changed to f13, 625/1000 sec



then finally to f22, 4.0 seconds



Even though I have some work to do next year, I am very happy with this batch of shots thanks to you guys.
John

trippy64

new technique for next year
I just was sharing photos of the fireworks, and he suggested changing the zoom while the shutter was open. Especially on a long lens. He stated the shots going in and out arer pretty intersting, something I will attempt next year.

i_worship_the_King

trippy64 wrote:

I just was sharing photos of the fireworks, and he suggested changing the zoom while the shutter was open. Especially on a long lens. He stated the shots going in and out arer pretty intersting, something I will attempt next year.

Was 'he' using a constant aperture lens? Otherwise you'd be adjusting exposure too, which may be just as interesting...