Newbie's first attempt at Fireworks (NDP Preview 30 July 2005). Plse comment & advise

[Clockunder]

I’m a photography newbie who only started to play with camera nearly 4 months ago when I bought a 2nd hand Nikkon Coolpix 5700 from Clubsnap buy & sell section (well, the camera’s lens were stuck after just 1 week and I had to spend about $240 to get it fixed at Nikkon Service Centre). Before this, I was a complete noob in cameras & photography. So far, I’ve been to less than 10 outdoor shooting sessions and here are my maiden shots of fireworks at the NDP Preview on Saturday night, 30 July 2005.

I had orginally planned to go to Sentosa during the day to practise my photo taking but had to cancel it due to rain. Because of this and recalling that there would be fireworks during the NDP Preview, I decided in the late afternoon when the rain stopped that I should try taking photos of fireworks. After doing some google search and reading a couple of articles on how to take photographs of fireworks, I trotted to Benjamin Sheares Bridge.

I only managed to have 4 shots because :
1) I set my picture quality to RAW format in hope of getting clearer pictures. It took a long time to process and save each picture. So I spent quite a fair amount of time waiting for the camera while the fireworks were popping in the sky. I only managed a total of 6 shots but 2 were cancelled immediately after shooting because the preview showed that my shuttle release button timing wasn’t very good.
and
2) I didn’t realise that the fireworks would come from 2 firing points and therefore I had to adjust my camera from a vertical view to a horizontal view on my tripod after the first couple of shots.

Here are the 4 photos :
Camera : Nikkon Coolpix 5700
Tripod : Slik "Sprint Pro GM/CG" (a compact and handy tripod)
Focus : Infinity (i.e. Landscape)
Aperture size : F/8.0 (the smallest possible on my camera)
Exposure mode : Manual (BULB)
Shuttle speed (Exposure time) : 3-5 seconds (manually timed by holding the shuttle release button down).
Sensitivity : ISO 100 (the lowest possible on my camera to minimise noise and over-exposure)
Metering : Matrix 256 areas of frame
White Balance : Auto

Most of the above settings are based on what I’ve learnt from the articles : to prevent over-exposure when the aperture is needed to be open for a long time to capture long traces of the fireworks against the backdrop of a dark sky.









My questions :
1) Does using a normal "fine" quality give a noticeably poorer image quality when compared to RAW format? Normally, I use "fine" quality of which each 2560x1920 pixel picture would be around 1.5 MB. In contrast, each Raw format image occupies 7.65MB. I purposely used RAW format here because I thought the color vibrancy of the fireworks would be more captured better than using a normal fine quality format. Am I wrong in thinking so?

2) Instead of using Infinity focus, would it be better if I use the method of manually focus my camera on a distant building and then lock it for use in shooting fireworks subsequently?

3) Instead of manual timing, would it be better if I just set the exposure time fixed? I’m not using any remote control and so I’m concerned that my pressing of the release button had caused a slight blurring of images. What is usually the best exposure timing for the kind of fireworks we see in NDP : 4 secs, 6 seconds or 8 seconds?

4) Should I leave the white balance to Auto or should I do something to it?

5) I will probably be going to Marina area to shoot fireworks again next Saturday if it doesn’t rain and time permits. I would appreciate any suggestions or pointers for me to try it out in my next fireworks shooting.

Thanks!

[Reno]

Wow...!! Your second is the best..!!

Erh... i dunno how to comment also.... cos i am still a newbie too...

[Madmax]

I find the 1st the best....smokeless!

[Clockunder]

Thanks for comments.