fireworks - 4th of july - bottle rocket

            Cousin Greg launching 4th of July fireworks bottle rocket over one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. 

I’ve been getting a few questions on how this was done so here's the full story:  We did this one over a long 4th of July Holiday stay at the lake cabin on a windy night with a close to full moon. 3 People were involved; 1 model, 1 person to light the bottle rocket, and 1 cameraman (me).  I was using a DSLR (Sony A77) at the time that let me set Shutter Speed, ISO and Aperture independently in Manual Mode (kind of a 'duh' for you Flickr Pro's but those were the questions I was getting).  I put the camera on a tripod, attached a wide angle lens (11-16mm) and had a remote shutter release cable attached so I could take a picture without touching the camera and potentially shaking and blurring the image.  We shot off a test bottle rocket and counted ("one one thousand, two one thousand . ." ) how long it took from lighting the fuse, till it flew and exploded – the total time was 5 seconds – so that is what I set my camera Shutter Speed.  We launched some more test rockets off and worked at adjusting the launch angle against the wind trying to get in the entire arch and explosion into the picture frame (easier to do with the wide angle lens).  I also took a couple of test pictures and played with Aperture and ISO settings and checking how those effected the exposure (shutter was set to 5 seconds).  I settled on an Aperture of f/5 because it seemed to get everything around the launch area and model in focus and it helped to keep the ISO low.  ISO was at 400.  The Histogram was on the dark side but it looked good in the camera.  I positioned the model on the back side of the rocket from the camera so he would get illuminated by the sparks.  It also looked better if he had his hands out otherwise he was just a floating face in the dark.  It was very dark out so I shined a flashlight on the model to set the camera's Auto Focus and then I switched the camera to manual focus so it would not hunt for focus during the shot.  Time to take the picture: I had the model freeze and try not to move for the entire 5 second exposure.  My helper lit the bottle rocket and as soon as he got out of the way, I pressed the remote camera shutter, the rocket took off and exploded and my shutter clicked shut.  We did it in one take and then ran out of there cuz the mosquitoes were eating us alive.  On the computer in Photoshop; I cropped the picture, adjusted the colors and saturation a little, used a program called Noiseware Pro to reduce noise, used a program call Topaz Adjust  to make the red orange sparks ‘pop’ a little and then gave the entire image a little overall sharpening.  That's it – thanks for looking. 

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Taken in: United States / Minnesota / Paynesville (show map)

Taken on: July 3, 2012

Tags:

fireworks

4th of july

rocket

takeoff

launch

sparks

trail

long exposure

minnesota

lake

night

slow shutter

how to

instruction

long exposure of a bottle rocket

sony a77

slow shutter photography

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Camera: Sony SLT-A77V, f/5.0, 5 sec, 11mm (=16mm), ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony SLT-A77V
Lens:	20mm F2.8
Aperture:	f/5.0
Exposure Time:	5
Focal Length:	11mm (35mm equivalent: 16mm)
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (Windows)
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