Friday, November 1, 2013

Lights.... Camera.... Fireworks!!!!

With the festive season around the corner, i am often confronted with questions regarding fireworks and colourful festive low-light photography. Since its been quite some time since I wrote, I thought why not add line or two on these...


The world of Fireworks...

Fireworks have always fascinated me and capturing the colours and the grandeur of fireworks is what I have always liked. Certain points to be noted here though...

Things needed...

  • Shoot RAW - absolutely necessary here since we are living in regions where the sky and ambient color keeps changing. raw shooting helps a lot in post processing like white balance, exposure, noise, etc. unless you really like orange skies to be captured
  • Strong/Heavy Tripod or fixture - this one is another absolute necessity unless you have really really steady hands (read not possible). the camera's position in the 3 dimensions needs to be fixed and why so, we'll come that in a bit.
  • Wide Angle Lens - preferably 18mm and below to get the whole landscape
How to...
  • typically on a dark night of diwali, you would want to set-up your shooting on a tall structure (building terrace, hill, etc.) near lots of action
  • mount your camera on the tripod and align your camera to get the composition you like
  • set your camera on Manual, with shutter at around 10sec (not 1/10sec) and take a click at whatever other settings the camera is at
  • with hardly any movement, other than strong winds, you should be getting a bright image of the otherwise dark cityscape
  • notice the orange tinge (ideally for polluted cities like Mumbai), if you like it then no issues, otherwise a Tungsten White-Balance can remove the orange tinge
  • a camera wireless remote or wire-triggers to reduce camera shakes
  • I would preferably shoot at
    • Shutter - 5sec to 20sec 
      • depending on the speed of the fireworks (you dont want overlapping fireworks else it will be a ball of white light)
      • remember, longer the shot, more time for the camera to process and hence more of missing action
      • also longer times are good if the fireworks are happening on a wide area and not starting from the same place
    • Aperture - f8 - f11
      • depends on the first shot you took; if it isnt sufficiently bright move to higher apertures
    • ISO - 100 or lowest values
    • WB - Tungsten
    • Long Exposure Noise Reduction - OFF
      • if your cam has this, better to keep it off and remove the noise in PP
  • once the fireworks starts.... what are you waiting for... just SHOOT!!!


Shooting People & Low-Light Photography

This one's interesting, since these would be mostly candids and missing the moment is missing the shot. Very rarely would get another chance with the same expressions and emotions. So you need your camera to capture as much details as possible in the shot.

Photography is all about capturing and light and for such quick moments, you need a fast lens - one with a large aperture. f2.8 and lower I mean. And that's because, you need a higher shutter speed for capturing moments and if you recall my last article, shutter speed and aperture are inversely proportional, so you need a large aperture.

Another way is to use flash to freeze the motion and yet this doesn't always work. Flash power and its light's spread is limited.

Finally, you can compensate for smaller apertures and higher shutter speeds by using higher ISO speeds. Limitations for higher ISO is the digital noise, which can be cleared off in post processing only to some extent.

Okies enough of the gyaan here... the most important part of photography during festivals is DO NOT keep the camera INSIDE your bag or you lose the moments.

Keep clicking... and Happy diwali...

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