A Fine 4th of July Celebration

[ccphoto]

1 Cupcake Sprinkles



2 Shazzam!



3 Opening Salvo



4 Inside a Startbrust



5 Grand Finale

[Mike Buckley]

A wonderful set of colorful, nicely composed images.

[skitterbug]

A beautiful set of firework pics! Well done! Makes me wish I'd been there to watch!

[IzzieK]

Beautiful all!

On the other hand, if you can give a link (a few if you do not mind) on how to capture fireworks on a proper full frame DSLR, it will be nice. Or tell me your method in simple English, please...

I had read up and followed instructions day before and on the day of July 4th and kept my camera in the car because I was testing on using on the bulb mode earlier while the sun was still out and I kept failing. I started with the recommended F11 and end up with F32 or F36 while holding the S button down for 5 seconds then 10 seconds and the bright sky was overblowing on me. I badly need instructions... I used to be able to photograph fireworks but it was way back in my Olympus 3/4 camera.

[ccphoto]

Beautiful all!

On the other hand, if you can give a link (a few if you do not mind) on how to capture fireworks on a proper full frame DSLR, it will be nice. Or tell me your method in simple English, please...

I had read up and followed instructions day before and on the day of July 4th and kept my camera in the car because I was testing on using on the bulb mode earlier while the sun was still out and I kept failing. I started with the recommended F11 and end up with F32 or F36 while holding the S button down for 5 seconds then 10 seconds and the bright sky was overblowing on me. I badly need instructions... I used to be able to photograph fireworks but it was way back in my Olympus 3/4 camera.

I shot these on a 1/2 frame (DX) D500 coupled to a 24-120 locked in at 48mm on most shots. Fireworks just about have to be shot when it is 0-dark-thirty or you will get a consistent backlit blowout. My shot, the Opening Salvo was shot at the end of the Blue Hour and it took a bit more post work to get it right. I shot a wide variety of apertures and shutter combos just for the heck of it. The early ones, which were the easiest (and I could have shot them all night on that setting with great repetitive images) were done at f/11, ISO 200, 6 seconds. The grand finale was shot at f/22, ISO 50, 14 seconds.

I get most of my images out of Camera Raw as shown here:



The rest I do in Photoshop using either NIK's Vivesa or an extended mid-tones luminosity mask. I rarely spend more than 3 or 4 minutes on these kinds of edits because, for the most part, they're all shot pretty much the same way. The important thing in RAW or LR, is to really push those highlight and whites sliders hard to the left and push hard back on the blacks while pushing the clarity and vibrance sliders hard to the right.

Of course, I just noticed on this one, I pushed the highlights to the left and the whites to the right because there was only a little true white to work with.

[bnnrcn]

Lovely set Chris

[Mike Buckley]

My shot, the Opening Salvo was shot at the end of the Blue Hour and it took a bit more post work to get it right.

Your post-processing capabilities certainly paid off, as that is the most appealing image in the set for me precisely because of the color of the sky.

For an alternative bit of story telling, consider cropping that image to eliminate about half of the reflection in the water to place greater emphasis on the fireworks in the sky.

[Wavelength]

Awesome!!!

[Shadowman]

Nice sparks.

[Rainforest]

Water and light - how can you go wrong? Super!

[ccphoto]

Thanks everybody. I love fireworks shows and love shooting them, too.