At 23:34 7/21/01, Henrik Dahl wrote:
John,
very nice pictures. How do you get the sky so amazingly deep black. No
stray citylight or stars. Great.
Henrik "envious" Dahl
Talked to Curt, the pro who asked me to do it and discussed vantage points
when he made the request. Selected the location to avoid the rising moon
(June 30th was several days past 3rd quarter) from rising behind them (the
problem Mike had on the 4th). Also set up so that there were no street
lights within view and used the lens hood. This time I specifically used
the 35-105 Zuiko Zoom, in spite of the dim viewfinder it creates at night,
so I could pull the focal length a little longer than 35mm if I needed to
get anything like what you mention out of the frame. I was shooting over a
7 foot (2 meter) wall about 10 feet (3 meters) away. Tilted the tripod
head upward and ended up pulling the focal length out a few millimeters to
get rid of the top of the wall. One of my photographs does have a piece of
the wall at the very bottom edge, when I checked composition about half-way
through and didn't extend it back out until I had shot a frame.
I was lucky this year that the sky was almost completely clear of clouds
which can reflect the light of the fireworks and show in long exposures. I
think skyrockets are much, much brighter than the stars. OTOH, one of the
brighter planets might show, but if the frame is filled with the skyrocket
bursts, it will get lost in it. There was a fool orbiting the sky display
in a private plane. I could see his running lights and was worried they
would show. The brightness of the skyrockets completely covered them
over. I looked for the plane's lights and could not find them in any of
the prints.
Thanks!
-- John
[who fully admits there is a substantial element of luck in shooting fireworks]
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