S90 and Fireworks

This little camera continues to impress me, shot at the annual fireworks competition in Brno (Czech Republic).

The display was over the reservoir, I was lucky enough to next to be on a balcony so I wrapped a little gorillapod style tripod around the railing and used the self timer to make up for the lack of a remote shutter release.

Shot in raw and processed (minimally) with Lightroom.

Great shot...July forth is not far away here in the USA. I will remember your settings for some shots. I did not notice and EV value...? none used?

Beautiful.
--
Bob

thanks, very cool!
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My best, Tom

I played around with the shutter speed and aperture, but left the EV alone - the subtleties were probably going to be lost when the whole thing was pretty hit and miss anyway. By their very nature fireworks are random, you never know how much light will be in the sky from one moment to the next.

I used the self timer and set the S90 to take 10 shots in the right direction. I varied the shutter speed from between 1 and 3 seconds going from F2 upto F8 and to be honest I have to look at the EXIF to work out which is which.

20 minute show, around 250 shots (24 of which I really like) and probably more luck than judgement

Amazing small cam but if only we can get it right the way we want it instead of trial and error. I guess practise makes perfect. I'm trying to use mine to create a sharp photo with blurry background. Anyone with s90 done that or can it be done?

Changing the settings was not really a case of trial and error (though with instant review, histograms etc. it's as good an approach as any.)

I was more interested in seeing the effect of longer and shorter exposure times, fireworks are so unpredictable there was never going to be a 'right' setting.

Personally, having spent a while getting to know the S90 I am loving it's size, flexibility and results.

pkimc said:

I'm trying to use mine to create a sharp photo with blurry background. Anyone with s90 done that or can it be done?

Click to expand...

Up to a point. The key is to use the widest aperture you've got. Here are two pictures, one with the S-90 at F 2.0, the other with my Olympus Pen with a Panasonic lens at F 1.7. In both cases, a part of the object in the foreground (the screwdriver) is in focus and the background is blurred. You can see that the effect is greater with the Olympus because of the larger aperture. The F 1.7 is shooting onto a larger sensor than the F 2.0 also, and I believe that exaggerates the difference, although someone with more expertise than me will have to explain the details of how and why that works. So you can do what you're asking with the S90, but not to the extent you can with other cameras/lenses.

-Ray

Excellent image ...very well done !

All the best,
Nick
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My RedBubble site : http://www.redbubble.com/people/NickBland
New S90 images at : http://nickbland.zenfolio.com
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Outstanding! Subjects like fireworks and lighting strikes can be very difficult to capture at precise time frames because of the sporadic nature of the peak moments (which is all but impossible to predetermine) and the longer exposures needed. You've done a great job and if you manged to capture 24 "keeper" images of the 20 minute show then you did remarkably well. Thanks for sharing

Thanks for the kind words though I think it's a combination of a lot of luck, a remarkably capable little camera and to a much lesser extent my judgement.

I've posted the rest of the pictures I liked (though obviously that's pretty subjective) to my gallery. Here's a couple more of my favourites