Thanks for the compliments everyone. The hard part is finding a good spot to take them from. And unfortunately, it is not like they are set off every day so one can practice taking them. I think I may know of a place that will have some small displays 2 times in the next 2 months. I may try to get more. Still, for my first serious attempt (where I actually didn't set up from my home or the farm), I am happy with them! I learned a ton from this shoot, and am ready for the next one. It is funny how inspiring a couple of nice photos can be to do it again. Laughs.
Oooooooooo! Ahhhhhhhhhh! lol
Love fireworks, love your pictures! What kind of camera did you use for those pics?
I used an older model digital SLR camera. It is my Nikon D100 and used my Nikkor 28-80mm lens. I was zoomed in at 80mm for these. I have to say that I would have loved to have the write speed of the newer models like the Nikon D2X has as I would leave the shutter open for 4 to 5 seconds and then it took 5 to 10 seconds for the camera to process the files and write them to the card.
Since my digital slr is only capable of shooting ISO 200 or above, I set it to ISO 200, F stop of 11, and the shutter speed at 4 seconds as my baseline. From there I did go to a F stop of 13, and increased the shutter speed to 5 seconds and the colors were a little better. But what was the toughest was timing the shutter release with the explosions. Sigh. I took lots of pictures of the black sky with very little in the way of fireworks in them. But practice will make perfect... eventually.
Here is a picture that shows the colors of the fireworks really nicely, but imo it wasn't interesting like the first two that I posted. Most of my shots lacked the ground features to make the shot interesting because of where I was at there was nothing lighting much up. The low level fireworks lighting up the trees in the first two pictures is what makes the shot imo. Still, the color in this shot is really nice. I may try more at F/13 and 5 seconds.
