Saturday, March 26, 2011

Fireworks - Skyfire 2011

Last weekend was Skyfire - a firework show which is held over Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra on a yearly basis. I originally wasn't planning on going along, and the on/off again rain of the night didn't do much to help.  I did however, receive a tripod for my Birthday recently, so at the last minute I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to test out taking some photos of fireworks.

I did my research beforehand...

 
... and determined the general consensus on taking good firework pictures seemed to be low ISO, long exposure, manual focus and a mid range aperture.

As I do not have a shutter release cable, I had to set the self timer to 2 seconds, then press the button before I expected the fireworks to be visible. As a result, using shorter exposures (such as 1 second) didn't seem to capture the moment as I intended as the timing was too difficult. For a solution, I opted for longer exposures (ranging from 4  - 30 seconds) making it impossible to miss the action.

On  side note, after coming home I decided (a) I did want a remote shutter release, but (b) I wanted one cheaply, so I jumped on eBay and have ordered myself the following Infared Remote Shutter Release. For $5.49 it will be interesting to see how it goes!

Some of the results...


f/11, 3.2s, ISO 100

f/11, 13s, ISO 320

f/11, 5s, ISO 125


2 comments:

  1. Nice stuff Brad! I'm using an el cheapo IR remote from DealExtreme and it's holding up fine, so I think you'll be okay! I like to set shutter speed to BULB and just hold down the remote button as long as I feel like depending on what's going on.

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  2. I tried a BULB photo or two... but without the remote shutter there was too much shake... i read of people draping baseball caps over the lens between fireworks so the background noise does not increase too much and so that only the good stuff is captured.. Will be interesting to give it a try!

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