...the 5th of November? Well, it was a while ago, but I've been busy!
Much as I love taking sports photos, it's nice to do something else for a change. Faced with being dragged out on a freezing cold evening to a fireworks display, I decided to make the most of it and take the camera.
I took the 50mm f1.8 with me, but I didn't use it - preferring instead to use the 18-70 to increase the chances of getting a firework in the field of view. We were the first ones to arrive so I was able to set up right by the safety fence - I actually had one leg over the fence with the other two right up against it to keep the legs as far away from kicks and knocks as possible.
I'd had a quick look on the web before I went and the advice there seemed to be pretty consistent - set the lens at around f8, focus on infinity, point the camera at the sky and open the shutter for 5 to 7 seconds at a time. And that's all I did. Just tried to time it so that I opened as the blast started - which got easier as time went by and I got used to how fast the rockets and mortars travelled.
I shot RAW and I have to say, I'm quite pleased with the results - especially after tweaking the exposure and resetting the black point. There were a lot of empty skies and many that didn't quite work, but some of those that did were as good as many 'pro' shots I've seen. I haven't put these on swarbrick.com as I'm trying to restrict that site to sports and automotive photography but if you want to see some more they're in my flickr collection.
I'd be amazed if they were, given that I'm an amateur and this was my first attempt at fireworks.
Do you have a link to some of yours?
Posted by: gswarbrick | December 29, 2005 at 08:51 PM