Deepavali Fireworks 2010

While many of my friends and family members were busy lighting up all kind of fireworks during this Deepavali, I was busy shooting fireworks. I'm happy to see that my shots are better than last year's.

Technical Details :
Shutter speed : 0.6 and 0.8 second
Aperture : 5.6, 6.3, 8, 20 and 29
ISO : 100, 200
Lens : Canon 18-55mm
Camera : Canon EOS1000D (same one used last year)
Camera was mounted on a tripod and triggered with a home made remote cable release.

Deepavali fire works

Happy Deepavali! I was trying to capture some fireworks this evening and was not very successful. Some photos came out really bad which proves that I still need to learn a lot of things. Here is some photos I have taken today.

For those who are interested in the technique used, here we go:
Shutter speed : 1/4, 1/5 and 1/6. The slow speed helped in capturing the trails of the fire work.
ISO : 400 - As the shutter speed values were low, had to increase the ISO.
Aperture : Most of the time f4.
Focal length : 55mm
Lens used : Canon 55-250 with IS.
Camera : Canon EOS 1000D.
Manual focus was used as the light was low and did not have much time getting the auto focus right.
Tripod : Big mistake, Tripod was not used.
All pictures are cropped and re-sized using Picasa. The water mark was done using GIMP.

This is how I managed to mess these shots.

1. Tried to capture too many different things simultaneously. Most of these things required different settings and most of the time I clicked with the previous settings.
2. Not using a tripod. I thought it would be difficult to carry the tripod around and I would be able to manage without tripod. Even with Image Stabilization and high ISO, I had to use very low shutter speeds. As my hands are shaky, the pictures got a touch of modern art.
3. Hurried shots - I wasn't paying attention to what was happening on the ground and was concentrating towards the sky. So when the fireworks went off, I was scrambling to compose the shot.

In a nutshell, the problem was me. Other reasons like Earth's rotation or Global warming do not have anything to do with these shots.

However, the shaky hands have given a little bit of surrealistic touch to the pictures.

This one reminds me of the pictures taken by Hubble telescope.





The next photos will definitely qualify as modern art :-)