Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 7 (North Pier Fireworks)

Last post for the Chicago Tall Ships event!  These are the fireworks from the north side of the Pier. 

Many cameras have built in fireworks settings.  Mine doesn't, but it's a quick Google or trip through your owner's manual to figure out the best settings.

For my camera, the best images come from an ISO of 800  the Tv setting running about a 2.5 - 3.2 second shutter. When I'm on Tv the camera sets the aperture setting, which usually runs somewhere around f4 or f5 for something like this.

A tripod is a must.  When you have a 3 second shutter on something moving, you can't breathe, blink, or sneeze or you will have a lot of wiggle.  I forgot the foot to my quick release tripod on the 4th of July and got a whole lot of garbage trying to balance the camera on the tripod.  It just won't work.

Second Set

 These fireworks went off in the last trails of one of those huge 'weeping willow' looking fireworks.  There's just a little wiggle at the end of this one, which makes me think I may have bumped the tripod while getting ready to hit the shutter again.

Purple Over Yellow

 I love the colors on this one.  But then again, anything purple gets my attention. :)    I also like how very straight the purple light trails are.

Traffic Light Go Boom

They had a bit of a red/yellow/green thing going on.  There was on in the post about the Red Witch, where I captured how that looks on the water.

Color, Color Everywhere

A bit of the finale.  I wish I could have gotten a good shot of just the one on the far left.  I love the pink inside, purple middle and green outside edge.

Perforated Fireworks

I didn't do anything but crop this.  It looks like I somehow managed to stop and start the shutter, but it's actually the effect of the firework. 

Pink Over Yellow

 Pinks and yellows. 

Sun and Four Moons

There's some fantastic timing here.  Five fireworks that essentially went off at the same time and at fairly close velocities.  The red one is a little more intense, but the four purple ones are pretty close to identical.

White at Night

At one point they filled my entire lens with white light.  I love how the two on the sides clearly went off a few seconds after the one the middle, so I caught the explosion in the centers of them both.




Okay, I've finally finished Tall Ships.  Now I need to start sorting and cropping the last three hikes I've been on. *checks harddrive*  Wow, that's a lot of photos I need to sort.