New Year 2010's Firework

First project with Canon EOS 400D/Digital Rebel XTi

It took the eagle quite some time to figure out what would he like to post, since he got a mate to be dealt with, nest and eggs to be taken care of, and not to mention setting up snake traps here and there for either protection and free lunch. But here it is, the eagle eyes are still a bit sore from 2009’s lack of sleep and depression, so it hampers his ability to learn early on. But fear not, more projects and experiments will be posted as more knowledge is gathered during this lazy useless idle life phase of him.

This picture was taken from eagle’s mate’s second floor balcony, right at 00:00 am 01-01-2010, the fireworks actually launched from La Piazza at Kelapa Gading Mall, but since it only happens for a few minutes, and I didn’t brought my tripod, plus I was lazy, so there is no use of running down the street to get a better position, because it will be either too late or result in a horrifying image quality caused by either my unsteady hands (not a neurosurgeon’s hands I guess), or streetlights hampering the metering process.

This is my first attempt to get pictures with my sister’s Canon EOS 400D + 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens (which I had just claimed for ownership :D ) and I will stick to this camera for quite a long time. Because it happens so fast, there is no way I can use manual setting to determine the effect that I desire, so I set the ISO to 1600, used the P program to let the camera determine the correct aperture, which always 5,6 at 55mm focal length (the focal length that I use for all this images), and I rest both elbows on the balcony’s fences to act like tripod (which I couldn’t had done so if I ran down the streets).

All the image above were taken under correct exposure determined by the P program, so the aperture is varied from 0.6-2.5 s. although some of them are quite satisfying, personally think that the auto metering makes the sky look a little too bright.

Below are a couple of images that is accidently captured without waiting the camera to be ready, so that the shutter opens up quite briefly. But in my opinion it gave quite a decent effect. It isolate the fireworks with no trees or grainy sky background, and it freeze the fireballs along with its smoke, contrary to just some lines of colors u see above.

And that’s it for now. Please give your comments especially Mr. Swikee, Mr. Snake (If you haven’t tripped on my snake trap), Mr. Ape, and Mr. Bunhead (even if it’s just to make fun of the snake).