Newbie's 3rd attempt at fireworks (8 August 2005). Comments/Criticisms/advices needed

Clockunder · 9th August 2005

My 2nd attempt was posted here :
Http://forums.clubsnap.org/showthread.php?t=144937

http://forums.photoi.org/showthread.php?t=1080714

Photos from my third attempt :
Camera : Nikon Coolpix 5700
Tripod : Slik "Sprint Pro GM/CG" (a compact and handy tripod)
Focus : Infinity (i.e. Landscape)
Focal length : 8.9mm (i.e. 1x optical)
Aperture size : F/8.0 (the smallest possible on my camera)
Shuttle speed (Exposure time) : Fixed 4 seconds or 8 seconds or manually timed (BULB mode).
Sensitivity : ISO 100 (the lowest possible on my camera to minimise noise and over-exposure)
Metering : Matrix 256 areas of frame
White Balance : Auto

#01 below : F/8, 4 secs

#02 below : F/8, 4 secs

#03 below : F/8, 4.5 secs

#04 below : F/8, 4.37 secs

Clockunder · 9th August 2005

#05 below : F/8, 3.97 secs

#06 below : F/8, 4.63 secs

#07 below : F/8, 8 secs

#08 below : F/8, 2.16 secs

I think today’s fireworks display was not as good as the one on last Saturday 6th August. The latter had much more distinctive patterns, vibrance and colors.

Moreover, today’s fireworks seem to be poorly choreographed and appeared (at least to me) to be shooting into the sky in a random unco-ordinated manner. There was too much break in between fireworks during low-level display and as a result, there wasn’t anything very interesting for me to capture during those times.

In this 3rd attempt, I was intermittently tempted to use 8 seconds exposure because of the seemingly long breaks in between fireworks shot from the ground. So some of my pictures were taken at 8 seconds exposure while others are either a fixed 4 seconds or manually timed. However, with fixed 4 or 8 seconds exposure, I was sometimes caught by a quick burst of fireworks which significantly illuminated the sky and my picture became over-exposed. In response, I switched to full manual control of exposure time for quite a number of my shots in hope of controlling the amount of light captured. Despite this, it was still sometimes too late to shut the aperture as I was caught off guard and over-exposure still occurred.

1) All the white/incandescent fireworks blooms in my photos appeared over-exposed and as a result, all pictures with white/incandescent blooms are not presentable. My guess is that a large area of darkness in my picture overall composition has caused over-compensation of light for those blooms by the camera’s auto white balance. Am I correct? Please enlighten. Will it help if I shoot vertically instead of horizontally (to reduce the amount of dark areas to both the left and right)?

2) When I was shooting, I noticed that the amount of dark areas in the picture might appear to be a little too much. So I tried to zoom in a little bit on the fireworks but my smallest aperture size became bigger (i.e. F number decreases to 7.1) because of my camera’s limitations and the picture tend to be easily over-exposed at 4 seconds. I was afraid that reducing the exposure time would decrease my chance of capturing full blooms with the right timing and shorter exposure time might not be long enough to capture the full trails of the fireworks. Morever, I wasn’t sure whether the picture captured would become less sharp with a bigger aperture. Will it?

3) Should I crop my pictures? If yes, how should I crop it so that the overall picture composition remains interesting? Personally, I like the composition of today’s pictures much more than those in my previous attempt. At least I now have some foreground and side-ground to the fireworks. However, I suspect the dark areas in each picture may be excessive and some cropping may be needed.

After viewing the pictures, please give your comments, criticisms and advices. I’m looking forward to your responses so that I can review, adjust and correct my mistakes/inadequacy. I hope to improve for my next fireworks shoot on 14 August, next Sunday.

Thanks in advance.

Clockunder · 9th August 2005

Before I get any advice on cropping, I've tried it out. Please comment. Thanks again.

I've used IrfanView to crop it and have yet to learn Photoshop. The above eight images have been cropped as follows : (I think they now look more wholesome) :

#01 below : F/8, 4 secs