I was away last week visiting my family in the Boston area. On the 4th, we went downtown to watch the fireworks. I brought my camera with, along with the other necessary knickknacks for photographing the explosions (tripod, remote control, wide angle lens, lots of memory card space, etc.). Lets see how it turned out...
Just after sundown, but an hour or so before the show starts. My dad has apparently strayed onto the frame; a hazard of wide-angle lenses.
Let the show begin!
The last one is my favorite of the bunch.
Some technical/technique info: Fireworks need long exposures to get the light trails, so that means a tripod is a requirement. These shots had shutter speeds ranging from 1 to 2 seconds. To minimize vibration, the camera was triggered with a remote (this also let me concentrate on actually watching the show, instead of looking through the viewfinder...) Because the trails are so bright, the lens was stopped way down, to f/11, and the camera set to ISO 100. A wide-angle lens made framing much easier, especially given how close we were (on the Mass Ave bridge, for those familiar with the Boston area). Finally, I took over 200 shots, and was very happy to get about a dozen or so nice ones.
-dms