David's Images of the Day Photoblog
To save on costs the township does the fireworks before or after the 4th. This year weather permitting it will be on the 30th. I hope to find a good place to set up my camera.
Gone for a walkabout at the Rock Mill Preserve with the Montgomery Friends of Open Space. A local park within walking distance of my house.
Montgomery Township in New Jersey typically has their Independence Day Fireworks celebration a few days before the 4th of July. This year it will be tonight. I have a great location to view the fireworks just down the road from my house. It is on a hill that looks down on the high school where the main event occurs.
Winston Hall has published an online guide for Photographing Fireworks with a DSLR camera.
I set up one camera set to do time-lapsed images (D3x with 180 mm f/2.8 lens), and a second camera do DSLR Video (D3x with 85 mm f/1.4 lens). The following 12 images were from the D3x and 180 mm lens. I haven’t used the 180 mm f/2.8 prime lens for some time and forgot how sharp this lens can be.
I finally had a chance to process the DSLR video of the 30-June-2011 Montgomery Township Fireworks display. The Nikon D3s camera is limited to 5 minute HD (720P) video segments. I ended up with three 5 minute segments. I left the in-camera sound recording on to get the sound effects of the fireworks. I also got commentary about the fireworks from a family sitting in front of my tripod. At one point you can hear a train whistle. The other clicking sound is the shutter of my other cameras. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to combine the first and third segments, zoomed in a bit so the firework display takes up more of the image, and increased the volume. I also used Premiere Pro to add a title page to the video.