Yeah. I know it isn't The Fourth yet. The
Huntsman Springs folks who put on our
fireworks here in Teton Valley insist that
it happen the weekend before the Fourth. |
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I had really never shot fireworks with a
dSLR before so I went out to YouTube looking
for some pointers. There were a number of
clips out there with what turned out to be
some good advice. |
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The advice and then some of the photos.
Advice is basically as follows: |
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1. Use a tripod and a cable release, |
2. Set the camera to Manual mode, |
3. Using a wide angle lens (I used my
24-70mm), set Focus to Manual Focus, |
4. Manually focus lens to infinity, |
5. Set camera to ISO 200 and aperture
somewhere around f/5.6 to f/8. I used f/8, |
6. Set shutter speed to between 2 and 30
seconds. I used 4 seconds, |
7. During the first few displays set your
composition and then leave it there, |
8. Click the cable release when you first
see a particular display projectile leave
the ground. With the long shutter speed you
don't have to be too precise. |
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I found a few other tips to be helpful: |
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1. Bring a comfortable portable chair to sit
on, |
2. Bring your iPod with some good tunes |
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I was stationed pretty far away to avoid
parking and traffic problems so my trusty
70-200mm would have been a better lens
choice. |
|
 |
• Canon
1D-X, f/5.6, 4 sec, 43mm, ISO 200 • |
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You probably cannot tell with photos this
small but these photos are really blurry. It
looked so easy on the YouTube videos.
What went wrong? |
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I suspect that the shutter speed was too
slow. I hope to test this theory with the
Jackson fireworks if I get the chance. |