Jacksonvillians do it a day early

Shot some fireworks that went on tonight in Jacksonville.  This is the first time I’ve successfully shot fireworks, granted the last time I tried was last 4th of July, but having a year in between shoots gives you time to think about how you’ll do it.

I was basically exposing for the fireworks.  I set ISO 200 at 2 seconds and f/20 manually focused on approximately where the fireworks would be.  All this is done on a tripod of course.

Next was to figure out how to handle the foreground.  2 seconds isn’t really enough at those specs to pick up anything besides black.  That is, unless you have a strobe.  I triggered the camera manually then manually hit the strobe before the shutter closed.  After some tests I found that 1/4 power provided the best exposure.

So I figured out how I was framing the shot then repeated till the show was over to make sure all the variables came out correctly.