Fireworks, Take Two

Last summer I did a post about the Fourth of July fireworks here. I was using my Canon Powershot and a cool wrap-around tripod I'd recently acquired. I was sort of disappointed with my results, and this year I set out to do a better job.

I brought along my D5000, my Vivitar zoom lenses (28-90mm and 70-210mm)





and my tripod.



I started out with the 28-90mm Vivitar, and was pleased to get a few shots with the landscape included.



That was taken with the lens zoomed in as far as I could, so I decided to try the 70-210mm. After switching them out I had to move my tripod back a few yards to be able to get the whole display in frame, but once I did this I was really happy with the shots I got out of this lens.

Here are a few of my favorites:


I started out shooting in landscape, which made it difficult to capture the whole firework at times




I love the purples in these last two shots


I turned my camera to shoot in portrait, and was able to capture more of the fireworks


I did some cropping in iPhoto








This one is my absolute favorite because of the way the ends of the green firework were captured as stars. I was really excited when I saw this.



Last year before I went to the fireworks display I read this article from Digital Photography School's website. I wasn't able to control a whole lot of the features on my Powershot, so I was looking forward to having full control this year. Before going this time I read this article. From it, I took the suggested ISO setting of 100 and the suggested aperture setting of 8-16. I had mine set on 16 for both lenses. For the shutter speed, mine varied from 5-12 seconds. I didn't use a remote release (because I don't have one)- I simply pressed the shutter button each time one exposure ended, or as soon as I heard a firework being set off.

All in all I think it worked out- next year I'm hoping to be somewhere where there's water to reflect the fireworks. Who knows where that will be... only grad school applications and time will tell. Eek!