Seattle

Photo Results : New Years Eve Seattle Space Needle Fireworks

Note: This post was started, but never finished, several years ago and references an event that occurred on January 1, 2017. Due to the lock-down, I have lots of time on my hands. As a result, I’m working on finishing some of the incomplete drafts.

I love fireworks. They always bring a smile to my face and are something that I find really enjoyable to photograph. Over the years, I’ve managed to get a collection of fireworks images that I am really happy with, and I’m always happy to share my go-to settings. They are iso200, f/8.0, 3.0 seconds.

In my previous post on this topic, I mention what settings I used for shooting fireworks.

I also have a post on my Instagram where I show my setup for photographing the Space Needle on New Year’s Eve.

The image I shared showing my cameras as setup for NY Eve Fireworks

Now with that shown, many people may realize that shooting through a glass window will create some really nasty reflections. So, here is what it actually looked like.

What my setup actually looked like for the NY Eve Fireworks

While it is certainly a lot less ‘gramable’, it works a lot better to keep the reflections down that would otherwise occur with shooting fireworks through glass. Maybe I’ll write more on this later.

With the background finished, let’s look at some of the results from each of the 3 cameras. When you get your settings just right, you don’t need a lot of changes in Lightroom, aside from whitebalance, crop, rotate.

Fireworks on the Space Needle ring in 2017

This was my favorite photo from the night. This was also from my primary angle, shot on a Nikon D750. The reason I like this shot is because it puts you right in the action, while keeping the sense of place. This is easy enough to guess ahead of time because the fireworks show always has rockets launched from the top of the needle. Plus, since I’d seen multiple shows from this same vantage point, I could guess about where show would be and pre-position, pre-focus, and pre-setup the camera. For me, getting the framing so it felt like you were inside of the show really helps to capture the energy of the fireworks. The show is exploding outside of the frame, which makes the viewer feel like they are right in the action.

Fireworks over the Space Needle, but a wider angle than before

Another photo I really like from the evening was from my wider angle. Since I’d seen the fireworks displays in previous years, I was able to guess about where the top of the display would be. Normally, you wouldn’t want the top of the fireworks off, and would want to have a bit of breathing room at the top, but in this case, I think it works.

A tip: when shooting really wide, make sure to include more of the sky than you expect to use in the final image. This is because often the image will need to be rotated slightly. Rotating often includes a small crop, and you need to account for this when shooting.

For my third angle, I went with something that was more of an experiment than the others.

Based on the results of a previous year, I tried to really zoom in on one side of the Space Needle to give a new perspective.

Here is the previous year’s image on the left, and the new for 2017 image on the right.

I wanted to experiment with such a tight framing. Since I was also using an older camera and old lens that I rarely use, if the experiment failed, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

This is a really interesting and unusual way to frame fireworks. But it is really difficult to pull off. The reason this was even possible, is because the launching point doesn’t move. When fireworks are launched from the ground into the sky, it is much more difficult to get these really tight frames. This image also works because the fireworks are exploding close to the launching point, which is also a fairly well-known landmark.

This was one of the last images from my old Sigma lens and one of the last images from my D300. At some point after this photo was taken, but, before I found it after my move, the focus ring has become difficult to turn. It was originally purchased around 2004 and was a surprisingly good example of a Sigma lens from a time when Sigma lenses were very hit or miss.

As another experiment on this post, I’m adding in a gallery of a other photos of the New Years fireworks.

-Brad

Experiments with Time : Seattle Timelapse, What I Learned

Hello Everyone.

This past weekend, I came up with an idea for an experiment with time.  I was sitting in my apartment, watching storms pass by, thinking to myself “it would be really neat to make a timelapse of these passing storms”.  But the storms came and went over two days.  So I began to think about how you could actually capture something that lasts that long.

After thinking about it for a day, I came up with an idea – a full 24 hour timelapse.  Somehow, I would have a camera take photos for 24 hours.

My first thought was to have 24 hours in 24 seconds.  Since I live in the USA and we use 30 frames per second on our TVs, shrinking 60 minutes to 30 frames means 1 frame every 2 minutes.  After thinking about this longer, I decided this was a lot of work for under 30 seconds of video, so I decided to go with 40 frames per hour, or 1 every 90 seconds.  This works out to 960 photos in 24 hours.  I ended up going with 1000 photos over 25 hours as a ‘just in case’ precaution.

After more thoughts, I decided to go from midnight to midnight.

So, with a concept created, I got ready.  I cleared out my memory cards, set up my tripod in my windows, then set up the camera.  I decided to use my D750 because my D800 is testing out a new tripod, and my 24-70 f/2.8 lens.  My initial thoughts were that the D750 would be better because the low light capabilities are better (turned out this didn’t matter) and because the files are smaller (this DID make my life easier).

For the camera setup, I had to shoot through a window.  So, I added my C-PL to the front of the lens to eliminate as much of a reflection as possible, then used masking tape to hold a dark blue hand towel to the window to prevent as much reflections as possible.  The towel was taped to the window, camera, and tripod.  Because I would be asleep and unable to make changes, I selected f/9 and iso400 in Aperture priority mode.  The D750 has a min shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second and a max shutter speed of 30 seconds.  Back of the napkin math said this would probably be fine.  For the metering point, I picked the only white object in the scene — the Space Needle.  This would also allow the auto white balance to correctly handle the transition from night to day.

And so, on March 7th, 2016, I set up my camera with a timer set to start at midnight, and went to bed.

I woke up at around 7:15 and checked the camera.  Oops, battery is running low, glad I looked.  One more battery change at 6pm was required.  The last battery charge lasted from 6pm to 1am and still had about 40% remaining in the morning.

I am very happy with the results of this test.  Due to a limitation of iMovie, each image ended up lasting 0.13 seconds in the final result, and each hour is around 5.3 seconds.

The first mistake I realized I made was when I first looked at the images.  I always shoot in RAW format.  But now, I needed to convert the images to JPEG.  The conversion took 6 hours.  Next time, I’ll either shoot in RAW+JPEG or JPEG only.  The reason I would use RAW+JPEG is because there is a chance some of the images are good enough to become standalone images.

The next change I would make for the next attempt is to have more images.  I find the resulting video to be quite nice, but, I wish it was longer.  I would probably change to 1 image every 60 seconds and potentially try to go for 2 days.  But, this would require more battery changes, potentially 3 overnight, and probably an external power supply.  There is also less time to change a battery during the night, when the exposures can get to 20 or more seconds.  During the day, when the exposures were 1/400th of a second, there is a lot of extra time for a battery swap.

The final change would be in the framing of the image.  I made the mistake of handling the framing after dark on viewfinder that doesn’t cover 100% of the image.

I would also like to make the resulting video better and more professional.  Right now, this is a rough draft video that was produced quickly to see how well it turned out.  Now that I know how it turned out, I’ll spend some more time on the video, which is something I am not very good at.  Because I started with 24 MPix files, I could finalize the video at 4K, but likely will keep it at HD only.

While I certainly wish I could get lucky and predict when a fantastic sunset will happen (as I look out my window tonight, the sunset is nicer than when I ran the test), this is one of those ‘luck’ things, which is difficult to predict 1-2 days in advance.

-M