4th of July Fireworks

[Barracuda]

Kicking off a catch all for everyone who wants to post their 4th of July fireworks shots. These were taken over the weekend, with the huge “Kaboom Town” show in Addison last night, many smaller shows were scheduled for the weekend to try to draw the biggest crowds possible. Luckily for me, I had a decent spot just down the alley from me to watch these.

[Yugoboy]

Nice shots! Tonight is myfirst night back at the stadium since vacation. Riding bike to work means I have o use my mini tripod. Wish me luck, I’ll share by Friday.

Turns out our water heater lost a seal while we were gone. Should be replaced tomorrow.

[Barracuda]

Thanks, at first I was kinda mad that they were coming up between a stand of trees, but ended up making for some fairly interesting foreground. Addison’s big show was last night, but after work yesterday I was in no mood to sit out in the heat then sit in traffic till 11pm to get home to see the show in person. Most of the local tv stations had it on though.

[Yugoboy]

OK… I worked tonight for the first time in 2 weeks (still processing and reviewing the pics from vacation.) The stadium had fireworks planned tonight, but I set up as if it was going to be run like a normal night. I knew that the pyrotechnics were going to be “more,” but I didn’t realize they were adding a second launch site. I missed a bunch of the more traditional type fireworks due to an inconvenient roof. The best I could do is what you can see in the fifth shot below.

Fortunately/unfortunately, these are the last shots I’ll be taking for a couple weeks. It’s a couple/few months after the annual servicing should have happened, and I’m sending my camera in tomorrow for it. They said 2 weeks. I fully expect to be trembling and mumbling incoherently long before that.

Final note: the orange letters on the building in pics 1 and 4 spell out KODAK. That’s Kodak Tower. Based on recent news, I’m thinking it may not be Kodak Tower much longer…

[Yoyo]

I brought my 85/1.8 as I didn’t know how far from ground-zero I was going to be, but it turned out that I was so close I needed to go back to the 18-55/3.5-5.6 and keep that at the wide end of things. I did a little experimentation with the bulb setting and baseball cap trick as well as panning and zooming. The evening’s musical accompanyment was provided by John Williams and John Phillip Souza, among others that I couldn’t hear. You know it’s the finale when Stars and Stripes Forever starts to play.

Crop of a panning exposure:

Embiggened at my SkyDrive:
https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=8ac1f8ceb42319b5#cid=8AC1F8CEB42319B5&id=8AC1F8CEB42319B5!940

Zoom exposure:

Multiple exposure (baseball cap trick):

Electric Light Parade (July 3) Crappy low-light auto-focus versus creative bokeh. (Not bad bokeh for the kit lens.)

I like how the curtains of white light give the impression of motion right-to-left and it seems like the red light is bursting out.

[ravnostic]

Nice shots, all. I don’t understand why everyone rags on the kit lenses. While not the fastest or bestest lenses out there, I’m typically happy as a clam with the shots I get from mine.

[Yoyo]

Nice shots, all. I don’t understand why everyone rags on the kit lenses. While not the fastest or bestest lenses out there, I’m typically happy as a clam with the shots I get from mine.

Perhaps I should have phrased my comment differently.
“Check out this awsome bokeh from my kit lens!”

Exposing for the Electric Light Parade was an excercise in futility. Eventually, I decided on Tv mode at about 1/15 sec. duration and center-weighted-averaging (since I like to put my subject in the center of the frame, rule of thirds be damned)(also, the center auto-focus point works better than the others) with the ISO cranked up to 6400.

I can only imagine how depressing the iThingy pics are going to be when people get them home and look at them on a screen larger than 2″.

I’m not one to complain about a kit lens, least of all the Canon EF-S 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 IS II. People ask me what I think of it, and my response is, “It takes nice pictures.” Several reasons:
1. The aperture doesn’t open up terribly wide to where focusing is hard due to the narrow sharp focus range.
2. Streets for about $150 new, and you can save 15% off that getting a good used one. (Perhaps only the 50/1.8 is cheaper?) (Compare to the 17-55 IS USM at $1,000+.)
3. Image stabilization for ~3 stops of exposure.
4. “Normal” focal length for APS-C, not too narrow, not too wide.
5. Lightweight and narrow body.
6. It’s the II version, so it must have been good enough to modernize / upgrade / reengineer / optimize-for-even-cheaper-manufacturing-cost.

When you get deeper into it however, the frugality of it becomes apparent, as will all consumer grade kit lenses: aberations, focal length dependent aperture, only 6 aperture blades, tiny focus ring, no distance scale, vignetting, blurry corners wide open, slow for a normal zoom, etc…

(Should we take this discussion to the Hardware section?)

[imtheonlylp]

These were actually from last year. Definitely not a professional photographer here – used a simple Canon Powershot A1100IS.

[ravnostic]

That 2nd one, imtheonlylp is WAY tool cool. Reminds me of an undersea creature from the deep!

[chupathingie]

That 2nd one, imtheonlylp is WAY tool cool. Reminds me of an undersea creature from the deep!

Exactly what I thought… that one really stood out for me.

[Yoyo]

That 2nd one, imtheonlylp is WAY tool cool. Reminds me of an undersea creature from the deep!

Exactly what I thought… that one really stood out for me.

That’s exactly what I though, to both of you.

Is it just me, or is blue anyone else’s favorite color of light?

[Barracuda]

That 2nd one, imtheonlylp is WAY tool cool. Reminds me of an undersea creature from the deep!

Exactly what I thought… that one really stood out for me.

That’s exactly what I though, to both of you.

Is it just me, or is blue anyone else’s favorite color of light?

1) I saw the under water creature similarities too

2) Not just you. 🙂

[Author]

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