Thursday, July 01, 2010
Shooting Fireworks
July 1 (technique)--With the big US fireworks demonstrations about to begin, here's the quick and dirty technique advice:
* Camera on tripod. Find your spot early. Consider foreground silhouette possibilities (option: light foreground with flash).
* Lens that has a manual focus to infinity on camera. Note that most ED lenses focus past infinity. Use an older lens that you can reliably focus to a fixed distance (usually at infinity or near it). It's almost certain that you can't focus via the viewfinder. Live View helps some, but I prefer to use a known focus distance via the lens ring.
* Use the base ISO on your camera.
* Do not use enhanced Picture Control settings. Use Neutral, -1 contrast. Believe me, you'll have enough contrast and color saturation. If you use enhanced settings you may just start blowing out channels.
* Set camera to manual exposure.
* Aperture should be f/8 to f/16. Which aperture will depend upon how close you are to the fireworks (smaller apertures for close work, larger apertures for far work). The aperture determines the "exposure of the light trails."
* Shutter speed determines the length of the trails. Often that means Bulb or long exposures to get full sets of trails or multiple bursts.
* Verify all of the above by chimping your first few shots. In brightly lit urban areas you may have to deal with foreground exposures. Your choices: silhouette, lit artificially, use aperture/shutter speed adjustments to bring in foreground.
from thom hogan
July 1 (technique)--With the big US fireworks demonstrations about to begin, here's the quick and dirty technique advice:
* Camera on tripod. Find your spot early. Consider foreground silhouette possibilities (option: light foreground with flash).
* Lens that has a manual focus to infinity on camera. Note that most ED lenses focus past infinity. Use an older lens that you can reliably focus to a fixed distance (usually at infinity or near it). It's almost certain that you can't focus via the viewfinder. Live View helps some, but I prefer to use a known focus distance via the lens ring.
* Use the base ISO on your camera.
* Do not use enhanced Picture Control settings. Use Neutral, -1 contrast. Believe me, you'll have enough contrast and color saturation. If you use enhanced settings you may just start blowing out channels.
* Set camera to manual exposure.
* Aperture should be f/8 to f/16. Which aperture will depend upon how close you are to the fireworks (smaller apertures for close work, larger apertures for far work). The aperture determines the "exposure of the light trails."
* Shutter speed determines the length of the trails. Often that means Bulb or long exposures to get full sets of trails or multiple bursts.
* Verify all of the above by chimping your first few shots. In brightly lit urban areas you may have to deal with foreground exposures. Your choices: silhouette, lit artificially, use aperture/shutter speed adjustments to bring in foreground.
from thom hogan
# posted by D @ 11:34 PM 
