Broke out the camera for last nights fireworks

[eww]

Well as some of you know we are down in Cannon Beach Or. for the week and last night we went up to see the fireworks show in Seaside. It is supposed to be the best on the Oregon coast. Let me tell you it was pretty amazing for such a small community. However said small community explodes in population for this holiday. It was a crowded beach with lots of beach fires, cough cough, hack hack, my eyes are burning... we stuck it out and had a front row seat on the sand after waiting for 6 hours for the 10 pm show. We decided to break out the Nikon with the tripod to see what we could get in pictures. I cranked up some custom settings and snapped away once the show started. We went with 100 ISO, 16 fstop, 18-55mm lens, manual focused out to infinity and the exposure set to "bulb" so I manually held the shutter open for 2-4 seconds each shot. When we got back to the house we uploaded them and was rather pleased with a lot of the shots. It's the first real attempt at this sort of photography. Feel free to critique as we want to learn more about this sort of thing. Some of these don't even look like they are of this world.

 

[eww]

And a few more...

 

[returnofsid]

Excellent work!! Next year, buy a remote shutter, so you don't have to manually trigger the shutter. The remote will open the shutter, with the first press of the button and close the shutter, with the next press of the button. This removes any chance of vibrations, from manually pressing and letting go. Also does wonders to keep your arm from getting tired...lol. Another fun trick, when using "bulb settings" is to use a dark piece of cardboard, held over the shutter (careful not to bump the camera) while the shutter is open. Remove the cardboard every time a firework blossom goes off, for about 2 seconds and replace it. Do this through 3 or 4 blossoms, and then close the shutter. It makes for a really cool effect, catching 3 or 4 blossoms, without gathering too much light, since the shutter is open for a much longer period.

I usually take lots of firework pics, and have an album of them, on my Flickr site. However, this year, we were just too wore out, from our recent "vacation" to Montana, so we stayed home and went to bed early...lol.

 

[akunochi]

Awesome pics. I would show you ours, but we just threw some road flares into the road, drank beer, and watched the neighbors shoot about 800$ worth of arty shells.

 

[crazyfish253]

yumm a few are makeing me hungry.