The 2004 Jaffrey, NH Festival of Fireworks on Saturday, August 22, 2004 gave me my first opportunity to try shooting fireworks with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel. Only my second time shooting fireworks at all (see below for the first attempt at the 2003 festival), this experience reaffirmed the difficulty of getting really good fireworks photos. I can't say I'm really happy this year's results.
The images below were all shot with white balance set to daylight, ISO 100, f/8.0, and manual (bulb) exposure times ranging from 2 to 10 seconds. One thing I screwed up was not getting the kit lens' focus set up correctly - I thought I was set at infinity, but now realize the focal distance was actually at 66m for all of these shots. Arrrrgggghhh. I have done no post-processing other than resizing, a little sharpening, and saving to JPG with 25% compression for small file sizes and fast downloading.
Next year, besides not screwing up the focus, I might try getting further away. While our seats in the VIP area are great for pure viewing pleasure, they don't afford the best photographic compositions.
The shots below are from the 2003 Jaffrey Festival of Fireworks, Saturday, August 16, 2003. Jaffrey's fireworks are put on each year by Atlas PyroVision Productions. These were all taken with a Canon PowerShot A70 with white balance set to daylight, ISO speed set to ISO 50, aperature set at f/8, and manual focus set at infinity.
