Chofu Fireworks
July 26th, 2005
This has been my first chance to get these photos up, from last Saturday’s fireworks show on the Chofu banks of the Tama River near where I live. Next weekend I might go out to Tachikawa and see if their festival is worth watching, but I haven’t decided yet. In early- or mid-August, Seiseki Sakuragaoka, also near where I live, will have yet another.
And then here are some stand-alone photos, just the small versions–but still some nice images.
By the way, that’s a train going through the bridge at the bottom of the photo above.
There might be more coming… I also have a bit of video. But this is all for the moment. I hope you enjoy them!
Very nice ! How did you take these pictures?
Thanks. Standard digital camera on a tripod. Used a 2-second delay so that my pressing the shutter button wouldn’t shake the camera. Then processed them in Photoshop, some of them getting lowered brightness and increased contrast, and then resizing & cropping.
These photos *are* very nice!
With a two-second delay, is it just a case of aiming at the sky and hoping that a firework will bloom two seconds after you press the button?
I don’t know how much these terms are relevant for digital cameras, but what shutter speed and aperture did you use?
Brad:
Yes, the timing for taking these is tricky; maybe 4 of every 5 photos were unusable at all. You have to see where each shot is going on its upward climb and predict where it will end up and when it will go off, then pray.
I usually used the mode on my camera where I set the shutter speed and the camera automatically set the aperture, which seemed to change from shot to shot. I also varied shutter speeds, going between half a second and 2 seconds.
When I finished, I had maybe 300 photos, from which I culled the best 40 or so, then went into photoshop for cropping and resizing, then chose which of those would get onto the site.
Digital cameras today are very good at doing everything that film cameras do, and more. The $320 S1-IS I have allows for manual focus (though that’s less than perfect), full-manual and full-automatic shutter/aperture control, or automatic for either the shutter or aperture while the other is automatic. Then there are pre-programmed modes, including “artistic” shots, panoramic stitch, nighttime, etc. etc. Too many functions to learn, in fact. I still haven’t tried the time-lapse feature yet.