Great Reno Balloon Race 2002
Disneyland '02
San Diego Wild Animal Park
San Diego Zoo
Sea World (San Diego)
Fort Churchill (Civil War Reenactment)
Governor's Mansion
Great Reno Balloon Race 2001
Monterey Peninsula
Zion National Park
Nightly fireworks, from our hotel room. CRW_0294.jpg (36600 bytes)CRW_0312.jpg (21065 bytes)CRW_0177.jpg (46146 bytes)
I purposely shot these handheld, without a tripod or, indeed, without any particular effort to keep steady.  Bulb, ISO 100, at f13 (for the most part, some at f16) I don't think I'll ever shoot fireworks any other way again. CRW_0301.jpg (21576 bytes)CRW_0317.jpg (46664 bytes)CRW_0167.jpg (65380 bytes)
They seem to capture the dreamy nature of fireworks just right, and some shots even seem like distant galaxies. CRW_0304.jpg (45980 bytes)CRW_0306.jpg (41572 bytes)CRW_0314.jpg (17991 bytes)
Absolutely no post processing, nor cropping, just resized to JPG for the web.  When I print I'll do some image enhancement, but I think these come out good right from the box. CRW_0307.jpg (30756 bytes)CRW_0308.jpg (28517 bytes)CRW_0309.jpg (31601 bytes)
CRW_0311.jpg (35549 bytes)CRW_0183.jpg (50273 bytes)CRW_0184.jpg (70512 bytes)
CRW_0313.jpg (22772 bytes)CRW_0315.jpg (42027 bytes)CRW_0168.jpg (26032 bytes)
CRW_0316.jpg (21150 bytes)CRW_0321.jpg (28849 bytes)CRW_0325.jpg (31674 bytes)
CRW_0322.jpg (41138 bytes)CRW_0323.jpg (13469 bytes)CRW_0324.jpg (36303 bytes)
CRW_0327.jpg (55496 bytes)CRW_0178.jpg (32753 bytes)CRW_0182.jpg (38276 bytes)
CRW_0173.jpg (35963 bytes)CRW_0176.jpg (25742 bytes)CRW_0295.jpg (20872 bytes)
Lessons Learned: There's lots of ways to shoot fireworks, but if you can get close enough (like we were) I think I'd shoot handheld every time.  Note that if you do this with the D30/60 you might want to turn off long exposure noise reduction: I did for all these images.  It keeps the camera from applying an equal amount of time to post process (I'd only use long exposure noise off for really long exposures, like minutes).

 

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