Experimenting with long exposure (1 Viewer)

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/

Nice. I love nightshots and long exposure photos. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure! Next up: Fireworks!

Very nice, Sam. I'm going to attempt shooting fireworks for the first time this weekend, too. Good luck in your attempt.

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/

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!

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.

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.

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!


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

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.

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.

Looking forward to seeing them!

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.

I like this one a lot, Don!
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj262/Gnomus_photos/Fireworks/?action=view&current=Solosan-MDRFireworks00003460.jpg

Thanks!

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

Nice work Scott!

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

That's a pretty nice video for a P&S camera, Don.

"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: http://bit.ly/rwblue Ironically, the article it accompanies is about how bad Fireworks are for the environment =)