New Year Fireworks

[Gaz]

Happy New Year.

I took a tripod and A7iv down to the beach to try my luck.
I read that I might like to set ISO 100; Aperture at F11, get back a fair way and shoot wide, crop later.
The same advisor suggested using a shutter speed or around 4s... but review after the first few images and adjust accordingly.

I set up the camera, for manual focus, ISO100, F11, 4s. then got distracted & decided to the view with 30s exposure.



It wasn't the best image but I was confident that an SS of 4s would be ok in the dark, with teh settings previously established.

But, after the first couple of images I noted that the fireworks was looking more like a vulcano of fury from the bowels of hell.


SS of 4+ seconds above.

I backed the Shutter speed down to 3+ seconds...however by then, there was quite a lot of smoke around reflecting all the light....


SS of 3+ Seconds above.


SS of 2 Seconds above.

Now, I wasn't upset about the exposure, but I had realised that I wasn't back far enough for some of the bigger shots and had to rotate the camera up/down as best I could, explaining the wiggling lines above in the image above, and I knew there was something much bigger on the way...


SS at 1.x seconds above.


Hopelessly too close, I adjusted the SS down to under a second, to try and avoid some movement and speed up the processing time that long exposures seem to consume...


SS at 0.8 seconds above.

Ultimately though, I resigned myself to the fact that I had absolutely no chance of capturing what was to come in any planned sort of way.


SS at 0.8 seconds.

When I got home I downloaded my goodies like a kid at Christmas, pony then noticing that I had neglected to switch the Aperture back to F11.

So lessons learnt. Program #1 prior to 31 Dec 2023. Still no wiser as to setting some successful settings but I'll be back next year.... a long way back this time.

All suggestions very welcome.

Happy New Year

Gaz

 

[Gaz]

Great advice. I never thought of it as a reverse flashlight, but somehow now so obvious.

Panning down to the crowd with the shutter open.

I did manual focus, but next year I want the water reflection and the back of the admiring crowd properly exposed. Maybe a composite of shots?


The included crowd element showed pretty ordinary results trying in one take.

I was happy with a couple of the shots straight out of the camera. Flukes.








On the subject of jokes someone told me "right! 0.8 is just right. 0.9 is too big and 0.7 is too small". He has no decorum.


Happy New Year!

Gaz