My recent shoot was during Grantsville Days this past weekend. I haven't "officially" shot fireworks yet, and my mom's house overlooks the park and the field where they are set off so what better time to practice, right? And, they are held 2 nights in a row, so if I really messed them up on Friday, I had Saturday to correct my settings, which I ended up doing. Friday night I had my camera set at F16, bulb mode. I waited for a good burst, opened the shutter and waited until the burst ended - guess what - Job Noise Reduction! Which meant, if I had my shutter open for 20 seconds, it took 20 seconds to process that shot in camera before I could snap another one. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of decent shots waiting for the camera to process, but lesson learned. The next problem I had Friday night was trying to find something for the camera to focus on. Since the fireworks were shot off in an open field, there was no chance of finding a focal point until a shot got in the range of where my camera was looking. Again, lesson learned. Also, a big problem I had on Friday evening was that they shot off a lot of bright white fireballs that kept blowing out my shots.
Saturday night was a bit more successful. First off, I turned off the Job Noise Reduction before ever starting to shoot. And when a burst went off, I waited until it got into my focal point in the camera before opening the shutter so my camera didn't have to continue to search to find something to focus on. And, if they mixed in a bright fireball, I shut the shutter down before I got blown out shots. So, with all that said, I got much better results the second night. I'm still not sure if I did it the right way, but I was fairly pleased with my first real try.
Now, with this weekend being July 4th, I have a place where I can set up overlooking Deep Creek Lake and my plan is to get fireworks reflected in the Lake with boats in the cove in forefront. I'll either get the shot that's in my head or I'll know where not to stand next year.
Wish me luck!
