illuminations

D

Dan

Member
I feel like I made some progress with my fireworks shooting this year. ; I don't know if there was really a change, but my tactics changed and while they were a little random the results were sometimes decent.
In the past I'd tried to find fixed forumula, I was setting exposures of so many seconds and such and such an aperture. ; This year I set it to bulb, experimented with aperture, and pretty much winged it with exposure time. ; I used a wired remote and held the button down for what I guessed would be the right amount of time, not for exposure but for firework trails. ; The results were inconsistent, I think my lesson is that it's important to actually know the show so you can anticipate specific sequences. ; I got a lot of shots with too many fireworks elements. ; But live and learn, I'm pleased with what I came back with.


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The purple one is probably the weakest of the group, but I just love the color. ; I'm posting it strictly for that delicious purpley goodness.

My shooting position wasn't good either. ; You can see some heads in the way of some of those shots. ; But I was more interested in developing my fireworks technique, not producing perfect results immediately.
 
Nice work again Dan. I understand what you mean about perfecting your fireworks technique. I did the smae on this last trip as I have never really gotten anything consistently decent. Here are a few I got this last trip in January (Illumination & Wishes).











 
What do you guys focus on when shooting fireworks? ; I would imagine the castle works for MK, but what about illuminations?
 
I usually focus on the spinning globe initially, and try to keep my aperture fairly small so I can get more depth for the fireworks. ; Though sometimes a refocus on the sky fireworks is necessary if you're focusing on alot of those.

I have been experimenting with fireworks photos for about 6 years, and I think have a basic technique down that works, but the main problem I still run into at Disney is that I occasionally get bad blowouts of highlights because of not expecting some of the bigger firework bursts or barrages in time. ; Funny, some of my better illuminations shots were completely unplanned, coming out of dinner at Morocco minutes from the show not having planned to see it, and sticking my P&S on the wall at France (no tripod) and hand-steadying to rattle off some shots. ; I just jammed in Manual mode, guessed at a middling aperture, and tried some 3-5 second shutter shots randomly guessing at when to press (and dealing with the double-length processing during the dark frame subtraction built in!).

I haven't yet had the chance to shoot Illuminations with my DSLR, on tripod. ; I shot a few handheld 'snaps' in January for fun, mostly crowd shots. ; I've done Wishes, and had the same highlight blowout problem when I forgot a few of the brighter moments were coming!

Dan...I like the first one - it's subtle and shows the bay setup nicely. ; Cooleo, I like your 3rd...cool colors and nice, interesting bursts captured!
 
Nice shots. ; I think taking pictures of Illuminations is especially hard since there is no single, close up focal point and things are really spread out.
 
As stated above, the Castle would be the focal point with Wishes. With Illuminations, I usually just pic the center of what I want in the picture as the focal point & set my Aperature as high as I can. ; If you look on my flickr site, you will see that my Aperature was set between 10 - 16 on all of these shots. Here are the settings on the one of Illuminations that Justin mentioned:

Exposure: ; 6
Aperture: f/14.0
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off
 
Beautiful - I would love to get some great night shots wile in DL in a few weeks, but lugging a two-year-old and a three month old will keep my hands full. I don't imagine wanting to carry a tripod as well!
 
Pixie, thats what the bottom of the stroller is for, along with every thing else. ; I know, I speak from experience.
 
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