Equipment Used: Nikon D750, 24-120mm f4 lense, SB-700
Speedlight, Viltrox Wireless Remote & Vanguard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod
Panorama days were held the first weekend of August with the fireworks
being shot off on the main basin of Lake Panorama on Friday night. Last year I wasn’t able to take any pictures
so this year I made sure I would be able to and was set up before they started
to light them. I walked out on the jetty so I could get the lighthouse in the
images as well.
The D750 had my 24-120mm f4 lense on it mounted on the Vanguard tripod.
With being on the tripod, VR was turned off along with autofocus. Shooting in
manual mode, aperture ranged from f4 to f11 while the bulb set for the shutter
speed allowed me to use the remote to vary the length of exposure. Most of them
were in the 10-20 second time frame. ISO ranged from 400 to 6400 for this
collection of images. While holding the remote to activate my camera, I used
the SB-700 in my other hand to throw bursts of light at the lighthouse to expose
that area of the image.
Adjustments to the images started in Capture NX-D, with changes to
exposure compensation to help increase the exposure of the boats on the water.
White balance was adjusted to direct sunlight. Instead of using a picture
control, I adjusted the saturation/contrast slider. The shadow slider was also
adjusted if need be.
Final adjustments were made in PSE 11, I first cloned out unwanted
objects in the sky, water or on the jetty. Next I decided that the jetty grass
was exposed too much so I used a brightness/contrast layer with brush tools to
darken that area of the image up. Next I sharpened certain areas of the image
followed by straightening and cropping them. After those steps were completed,
I was happy with how the fireworks turned out over the main basin.
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