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Experimenting with long exposure

post #1 of 31
7/2/09 at 7:07am
Thread Starter 
Fun stuff!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/sets/72157620855289340/

This one is probably my favorite:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/3680990994/in/set-72157620855289340/
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post #2 of 31
7/2/09 at 7:42am
Nice. I love nightshots and long exposure photos. Thanks for sharing.
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post #3 of 31
7/2/09 at 10:28am
Thread Starter 
My pleasure!  Next up:  Fireworks!
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post #4 of 31
7/2/09 at 11:29am
Very nice, Sam.  I'm going to attempt shooting fireworks for the first time this weekend, too. Good luck in your attempt.
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post #5 of 31
7/2/09 at 1:10pm
Thread Starter 
The number one rule for fireworks is BRING A TRIPOD.

Previous years, 06-07-08:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/sets/72157594193247129/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/sets/72157600724830048/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/sets/72157605970166365/

I defintiely think practice has helped too, I see much improvement year over year, tho I think my best picture ever was taken in 07:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/721919177/in/set-72157600724830048/
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post #6 of 31
7/2/09 at 5:32pm
 Very nice shots.  Good luck with the fireworks.  Lucky me, Santa Monica has their fireworks the Saturday before the 4th, so I tried it out with my new Canon Powershot SX1.  Realized I need to override the autofocus, and release the shutter after the fireworks exploded, otherwise I was getting big blurs of bright light.  The Marina has their fireworks day after tomorrow, so I can try again!
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post #7 of 31
7/2/09 at 10:20pm
Thread Starter 
Good luck Don!

And guess who didnt follow his own advice?  Well I DID bring the tripod but the boat was rocking so much it was useless.  Went handheld the whole time. 

Best of the bunch, IMO, is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/3683802546/in/set-72157620885094256/

And full set is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/sets/72157620885094256/

This one is a bit blurry but i still like it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/3683804098/

More tomorrow at Kaboom on the Navesink, held in Red Bank which is the biggest in NJ.
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post #8 of 31
7/3/09 at 8:25pm
 I decided to use a film camera for fireworks. It just seems so much simpler, setting it on bulb mode at the lowest iso, with a tripod and cable release. Also gonna be trying out some Fujifilms FP100 instant film as well.
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post #9 of 31
7/3/09 at 8:55pm
Thread Starter 
The "problem" I found with long bulb exposures is all the color bleeds out of them.  Good luck with them, maybe you will have better luck than I do! 

Had a BLAST at Kaboom tonight, no pun intended.  What a great show.  Stills are incoming but I got the video up fast!
http://www.vimeo.com/5446385

Download the full size version by right clicking and saving before playing on your own machine:
http://www.navesink.net/public_html/video/imagine.avi
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post #10 of 31
7/3/09 at 10:15pm
Thread Starter 
Put a few pics up tonight, more tomorrow:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kadath/...7620928831526/

Think I got some that will make me quite happy this round.
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post #11 of 31
7/4/09 at 4:31am
I tried my first fireworks last night. It was real hit or miss. My technique was f/8 - f/11, ISO 100, shutter on bulb with 2-8 second shutter speeds, cable release, manual focus on infinity, and (of course) a tripod.

I will post some shots once I have a chance to post-process them. I shot everything in RAW, as usual.
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post #12 of 31
7/4/09 at 7:55pm
Thread Starter 
Looking forward to seeing them!
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post #13 of 31
7/5/09 at 1:15am
 Just sorted through my photos from the Marina del Rey fireworks tonight and put a few up on Photobucket:

http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj262/Gnomus_photos/Fireworks/

with one from the Santa Monica College event, to compare.  This time I used the "fireworks" mode and found that the explosions didn't overwhelm the sensor.  Exposures vary from 2 to 4 seconds, with 3 seconds seeming to work about best.  Also, this mode locks the focus to infinity, so it's not searching all over the place.  Colors are a little underwhelming.  For the big finale, I recorded HD video (I'll post a link soon) and sat back to enjoy the show.

Overall, a better quality show than SMC, with bigger fireworks.  They also seemed to generate less smoke, so there was less in the sky for the explosions to light up.  Lucky me again -- Santa Monica will be celebrating the pier's 100th birthday in September with -- you guessed it -- a fireworks show!  So I won't have to wait a whole year to try this out again.

Happy 4th everyone.
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post #14 of 31
7/5/09 at 9:44am
Thread Starter 
I like this one a lot, Don!
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj262/Gnomus_photos/Fireworks/?action=view&current=Solosan-MDRFireworks00003460.jpg
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post #15 of 31
7/5/09 at 2:11pm
Thanks! 
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post #16 of 31
7/5/09 at 4:01pm
Nice shot, Sam.

Here are a couple that turned out decent from our local fireworks. I really need to crop some, but haven't had the time.

http://smerryfield.smugmug.com/photos/582666975_AodCt-M.jpg

http://smerryfield.smugmug.com/photos/582667681_Nxdqj-M.jpg

http://smerryfield.smugmug.com/photos/582656555_5WUqL-M.jpg

Edit: I guess the "img" code no longer works on the new forum. All the photos from my fireworks shoot are at http://smerryfield.smugmug.com/gallery/8799611_8zB4e#582625775_eMhmV
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post #17 of 31
7/5/09 at 9:29pm
Thread Starter 
Nice work Scott!
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post #18 of 31
7/6/09 at 12:17am
Yeah, Scott, looks like you got a lot of keepers.  

Here's the video from the finale in Marina del Rey last night:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dsolosan
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post #19 of 31
7/6/09 at 4:37am
That's a pretty nice video for a P&S camera, Don.
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post #20 of 31
7/6/09 at 6:22am
Thread Starter 

"It's not a new dinosaur, but I'll take it"


Something most HTFers may not know about me is that I originally chose my University based on the fact that they have an excellent archaeology and paleontology department, and that I took exactly one semester in that discipline before deciding that, as much as I love dinosaurs, that career path was not for me.  My dreams of making a find into the Smithsonian were dashed!  Today however the dream came back just a little bit, in a way I never expected...
 
Smithsonian Magazine has chosen one of my best shots as their picture of the week!  You can see the write-up here:
 
Ironically, the article it accompanies is about how bad Fireworks are for the environment =)
 
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post #21 of 31
7/6/09 at 8:48am
Congrats, Sam! That was an excellent shot. Were all three bursts there at one time, or did you use some multiple exposure technique?  I found that most of the shots I took with multiple bursts in the air at once resulted in an over exposure that I couldn't correct in post processing, even shooting RAW.
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post #22 of 31
7/6/09 at 10:44am
Thread Starter 
That was a single 1 second exposure, no photoshop tomfoolery other than levels and cropping to a square.  =)  If you do a google search for "red white and blue fireworks" it's always the first picture, so it gets quite a few hits a day.
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post #23 of 31
7/6/09 at 10:57am
 Awesome, Sam.  I've seen that shot of yours before, and it's definitely first rate.

Scott, yes, I've been pleasantly surprised by the video quality.  It's too bad I have to compress it so much to get it online.
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post #24 of 31
7/6/09 at 12:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten View Post

That was a single 1 second exposure, no photoshop tomfoolery other than levels and cropping to a square.  =)  If you do a google search for "red white and blue fireworks" it's always the first picture, so it gets quite a few hits a day.

That was probably my problem -- using bulb, my shutter speeds were probably always more than a second (more like 2-5 seconds). I found what worked best was to open the shutter when the burst first started and close it when it dissipated. However, for multiple fireworks going off at once, this resulted in a severe over exposure.

Next time, I think I will try auto bracketing my exposures by 2 stops, too, to give me more leeway. I never use that feature on my camera, but this seems like a perfect application for it.
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post #25 of 31
7/6/09 at 12:52pm
Thread Starter 
You can also bring a piece of black cardboard with you and cover the lens opening while using bulb during the 'flight' sections of a shell and removing it during the 'burst'.  Can be kinda neat.  I think the cool thing about fireworks is you pretty much have at most a half hour worth of time to experiment then a whole year to regret mistakes you made and make plans for next time.  Unless of course you live at Disney World where they do fireworks every night!

This is also the beauty of Digital.  You can see results as you go and compensate to taste!
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post #26 of 31
7/13/09 at 9:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten View Post

That was a single 1 second exposure, no photoshop tomfoolery other than levels and cropping to a square.  =)  If you do a google search for "red white and blue fireworks" it's always the first picture, so it gets quite a few hits a day.
 

Nice shot, Sam.  But wouldn't that actually be "blue, white and red" for you westerners?  

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Merryfield View Post

That was probably my problem -- using bulb, my shutter speeds were probably always more than a second (more like 2-5 seconds). I found what worked best was to open the shutter when the burst first started and close it when it dissipated. However, for multiple fireworks going off at once, this resulted in a severe over exposure.

Next time, I think I will try auto bracketing my exposures by 2 stops, too, to give me more leeway. I never use that feature on my camera, but this seems like a perfect application for it.

 

How would auto-bracketing help w/ these timed/moving-objects shots though?

Since you're probably shooting full manual (to be using bulb mode), why not just close down the aperture by a stop or two?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten View Post

You can also bring a piece of black cardboard with you and cover the lens opening while using bulb during the 'flight' sections of a shell and removing it during the 'burst'.  Can be kinda neat.  I think the cool thing about fireworks is you pretty much have at most a half hour worth of time to experiment then a whole year to regret mistakes you made and make plans for next time.  Unless of course you live at Disney World where they do fireworks every night!

This is also the beauty of Digital.  You can see results as you go and compensate to taste!
 

That's the old "hat trick" -- not that I ever used it myself.   And yeah, ditto that sentiment about digital.

_Man_
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post #27 of 31
7/14/09 at 4:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Man-Fai Wong View Post



How would auto-bracketing help w/ these timed/moving-objects shots though?

Since you're probably shooting full manual (to be using bulb mode), why not just close down the aperture by a stop or two?

 
Actually, I would need to open up the aperture a few stops in order to get a faster shutter speed.

As I thought about it more, I agree that using auto bracketing may not work well with a slow shutter speed and bulb mode. I did play with the aperture between f/8 and f/11, but probably needed to expand my range to larger settings (f/5.6 or larger) to see how that worked, too. At that distance and wide focal range, depth of field shouldn't be much of an issue.

Oh well, there is always next year to try again.
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post #28 of 31
7/14/09 at 6:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Merryfield View Post

Actually, I would need to open up the aperture a few stops in order to get a faster shutter speed.

As I thought about it more, I agree that using auto bracketing may not work well with a slow shutter speed and bulb mode. I did play with the aperture between f/8 and f/11, but probably needed to expand my range to larger settings (f/5.6 or larger) to see how that worked, too. At that distance and wide focal range, depth of field shouldn't be much of an issue.

Oh well, there is always next year to try again.
 


Scott,

Since you were overexposing, you need to either stop down the lens or shorten the exposure (ie. faster shutter speed) -- or do something else to reduce exposure like use an ND filter, if the other options are not desirable or possible.

Opening up the lens will just overexpose even more.

_Man_
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post #29 of 31
7/15/09 at 4:58am
Man,

For the over exposures, you are correct. I was actually thinking more about trying to reduce the amount of light trail in order to better show the burst. Hence my thoughts on opening up the lens in order to get a quicker shutter speed.

The difficulty in judging exposure with fireworks is you never know how bright the burst (or multiple bursts) will be until after it happens, and there is a large variant in exposure amongst the different bursts. Then it is too late to adjust, so it becomes a guessing game with lots of missed shots. At least by shooting RAW, there is some leeway to adjust the exposure in post processing and save some of the shots, as long as the exposure is not too far off.
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post #30 of 31
9/2/09 at 12:54pm
You can try automatic exposure and put the exposure setting down, i.e. -2.0. That will also give you some room to make corrections later, if necessary after all (hopefully not).

Manual is better, but you have to be very secure then. A bit of luck is always needed. I think I posted some of these before:









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