Back from the 4th of July celebration

Just came back from a vacation in Eagle River Wisconsin. Have a ton...and I mean a TON of photos to process. Usually I shoot Raw instead of Jpegs and the size of each file is so much different. So it takes me a while to upload them in my mac if they are in Raw format. Although I already processed some of the fireworks shots that I took.

These were all shot using a remote shutter release, with my camera mounted on a tripod. one very good tip on shooting fireworks is to use the bulb shutter option in your camera and use a remote shutter with it. Use MANUAL focus instead of auto. Question is, how do you use manual focus if your subject is moving? The trick is to look at where the fireworks are coming from and where they usually explode in the sky. Focus on where the majority of them blow up in the sky and then manually focus on that area. Use a narrow aperture starting from f8 onward...it all depends on what you prefer, but using a narrower aperture gives you more depth of field so the focusing doesn't have to be exact at all. With a narrow aperture you will have an easy time to manually focus without worrying too much if your focus is spot on. If you are using a shorter lens, you can actually focus to infinity and basically all the distant object would be in focus. I used a telephoto with my shots but was still able to focus right without being in the infinity area. You can easily do this by focusing on the very first few fireworks that blow up in the sky. After focusing, the sky is all yours.
















The whole set can be found at:

http://www.pbase.com/hardcoreboy/4th_of_july_2010_fireworks