Lake Panorama Fire in the Sky Fireworks - 18 Edition - D90

Equipment Used: Nikon D90, Tamron 24-70 mm f2.8 G2 lense, Hahnel Wireless Remote Control, Slik Pro 500DX tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

Lake Panorama held its fireworks show on the closest Saturday to the 4^th of July this summer and I headed to my usual location to capture the boats on the water and fireworks above them.

I set up both of my cameras and in this collection; the D90 was used with the 24-70mm lense to capture these images. Settings on the camera included an ISO of 400, f7.1 to f9.0 aperture and 42mm on the lense. The Hahnel remote was used to trigger the camera when I saw the fireworks get lit and I held the shutter open for anywhere between 3 to 23 seconds.  When running a two camera set up, sometimes you forget which remote you have pushed down which might turn an image into something good or bad?

Using Lightroom, I used user presets that I’ve developed last year for fireworks in the same scene situation and then further tweaked the basic tab sliders. Graduated filter and a mask was used to fine tune the exposure of the boats on the water and the reflection in the water.

In Photoshop, I cloned out unwanted objects like a cell phone tower and a buoy that was in the water. I used a vibrance adjustment layer to increase the color of the fireworks as well. I reduced the noise of these images with the reduce noise filter. I created 3 combined images in PS using different images of fireworks. I was able to do this by using different blending modes with layer masks and rotating the images to spread out the look of the fireworks.

These images turned out better I think because they are in better focus as far as the boats and firework bursts are concerned. Even though the D750 is the better camera, miss focusing caused by the lense made the D90 the winner on this shoot. With Panorama Days this weekend, I’ll have a second chance to get focused shots on both cameras. 

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Lake Panorama 4th of July - 18 Edition D750

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 G2 lense, Viltrox Wireless Remote Control, Vanguard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

Lake Panorama held its fireworks show on the closest Saturday to the 4^th of July this summer and I headed to my usual location to capture the boats on the water and fireworks above them.

I set up both of my cameras and in this collection, the D750 was used with the 70-200mm lense to capture these images. Settings on the camera included an ISO of 200-320, f7.1 aperture and 70mm on the lense. The Viltrox remote was used to trigger the camera when I saw the fireworks get lit and I held the shutter open for anywhere between 7 to 12 seconds.

I did make a mistake on these images when it came to the focusing of the lense. When I first arrived at location, I focused in and checked my focus on the lcd screen on the camera. I had it dialed in and then the fireworks started to go off and I had to switch the orientation of the camera which must of resulted in a small movement of the lense. This movement created these images to not be as sharp has those that came out of the D90.

Using Lightroom, I used user presets that I’ve developed last year for fireworks in the same scene situation and then further tweaked the basic tab sliders. Graduated filter and a mask was used to fine tune the exposure of the boats on the water and the reflection in the water. I created one panoramic of the scene and then merged together that panoramic with an image of fireworks using Photoshop. Two different firework images were also combined into one image.

In Photoshop, I cloned out unwanted objects like a cell phone tower and a buoy that was in the water. I used a vibrance adjustment layer to increase the color of the fireworks as well.

In the end, the images turned out good as far as the exposure and color are concerned but they aren’t has sharp as I would like unfortunately. In the future, I’ll make sure an adjustment to the lense can’t happen again. 

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Aerial View of Lake Panorama

Equipment Used: DJI Mavic Pro, Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop CC

I also did a little flying over Lake Panorama Boulder Beach and the main basin to capture the scenes there from the 100 plus feet in the air. Seeing a expensive piece of equipment hovering over nothing but water was nerve wrecking to say the least but I guess there’s no trees to run into over the water.

I used the same settings and editing process on these images has I did the golf course images so I’ll keep this write up short. 

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Aerial View of Lake Panorama National G.C.

Equipment Used: DJI Mavic Pro, Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop CC

At the beginning of July, I got to capture a new perspective of some of my favorite scenes to photograph after renting a drone for ten days. The DJI Mavic Pro was the drone I choice to rent based off its solid spec’s and packability. It arrived with 2 batteries which allowed me to fly around 40 minutes before I’d have to quit to charge the batteries.

There are a lot of menu’s on the drone and I watched a number of youtube videos to learn how to fly the drone before it arrived. In the menu’s, I changed the return home attitude, responsiveness of the controls and a few other things. In the photo menu, I shot in RAW, 4:3 Ratio and auto exposure. The Mavic Pro has a standard f2 aperture which I wish was adjustable like its bigger brother the Phantom.

I used the way points, tripod and point of interest features in the intelligent flight modes on the drone. The tripod mode is designed to make the unit hover in the air more precisely to allow for better photographs. I used the point of interest and way points to do videos of LPN GC. The way point mode was a constant learning curve and in the end, resulted in the crash of the drone. I learned the hard way when setting way points, before hitting apply after setting your last way point, be sure the drone is at a height that will fly over all obstacles. Once that apply button is hit, the drone flies back to your first way point at the same height as your last way point. If you can’t stop this feature in time, you run into a tree like I did that broke the gimbal bracket for the camera. Grrr

I edited the Mavic Pro’s DNG RAW files in Lightroom and used my custom golf course preset and then further tweaked the saturation and luminance sliders to enhance the colors of the fairways and greens. Lightroom even had a lens correction profile for the drone that I discovered late in the process of editing these images.

In Photoshop, I first cloned out unwanted objects or fixed the look of the fairway using the patch, clone and healing brush tools.  From 50 plus feet up in the air, you capture details that you don’t get on the ground such has the large amount of divots in a fairway. After that step was done, I then used a levels, photo filter and exposure adjustment layers with layer masks to put the finishing touches on the look of drone images.  The last step was to sharpen the images using a high pass filter.

After using the Mavic Pro for seven days, it was very neat to get the aerial perspective of the golf course along with other scenes like my hunting spots or farm fields. I found myself wishing the two batteries was four so I could fly longer between charges! After the use of the drone, I can see myself purchasing a unit in the future and can’t wait to find a unit that fits my requirements. 

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