Photographing Raleigh fireworks
Sunday, 5 July, 2009 — photography video
I shot a sequence of roughly 75 images in the course of 20 minutes during the fireworks display at the NC State Fairgrounds in western Raleigh. I used a remote trigger for everything and had the exposure locked in at ISO 400, f/11 and five seconds of exposure.
As I was editing the photos, I was pleased my tripod performed admirably. No appreciable shake. No one dislodged the tripod (likely to have been me). What I noticed – through the sequence – was the sky darkening, clouds drifting and people moving. So, while there are a few stills I like (and have uploaded to Flickr), I saw the whole sequence was worth sharing.
While I like the sequence as a whole, I’m not thrilled with how the rendered video pixelates the transitions. I’m unsure of the cause or solution.
As a result of the experience, I have extended notes in two areas, night photography in general, then detail on my workflow of creating the video.
Night photography notes
I wasn’t exactly sure what a good exposure value was going to be for the fireworks or how far away from them I’d be. My selected values of f/11 and ISO 400 were intended to first give myself a lot of focal latitude, minimal grain and the ability to get a longer exposure. The exposure time of five seconds was a good guess, confirmed with a couple of test exposures. After moving to Beryl Road upon realizing we were in a bad position to view fireworks, I used the remote release attached to the D300 and set-up bursts of exposure, four at a time.
A tripod is essential to night photography. Mine is one I formerly used for large-format photography, so the legs are extremely hardy and the head adjusts on three axis individually. If I was getting a replacement now, I would probably get something lighter. But, something heavy that won’t blow over easily or has a tendency to jump when you adjust the camera is good.
About the remote shutter release: Once exposure and composition is dialed-in, it’s nice not touching the camera for shutter release. During a long exposure, particularly those long enough to require tripod support, but less than a couple of seconds, touching the camera can induce shake and yield a sub-optimal image.
Unfortunately, with many dSLRs, using a cable release that threads into the shutter button is not an option. With cameras like the Nikon D70, D90 and such, there’s a infrared remote release. Fine, but that required triggering within view of the IR receiver. On the D300, there is a threaded release into a PC port, but that means a minimum of $15 for just a button on up to $150 for Nikon’s multi-function cord. While it works on Nikon’s top-end dSLRs, it isn’t compatible with the consumer models.
I use an off-brand release, with the ability to set a release timer, multiple exposures and probably a few other things. The main thing is, in this instance, cost aside, the ability to trigger multiple exposures without touching the camera itself was a bonus.
If you don’t have a remote release option, use a self timer.
Video creation and export
I used Aperture, iPhoto ‘08 and iMovie '08 to create the video. I imported the photos from my card, per normal process, and then opened iMovie. Within iMovie, I started a 4:3 project. I set the images to scale within my selected project size. Each photo is fully onscreen for two seconds, with a crossfade of .15 seconds. I was initially going to upload video to Flickr, but even at one second of video, I had 17 seconds more than Flickr’s 90 second maximum. I didn’t want to drop images from the sequence.
My initial difficulty was photo quality in iMovie. I keep my Aperture previews small, so the first run of video that used the RAW images directly was not very good. I exported the images as full resolution JPEGs. I tried importing the freshly exported photos into iMovie’s media browser, but no go. If it isn’t in Aperture, iTunes or iPhoto, iMovie won’t see it. Rather than import images I already had in Aperture, I imported them into iPhoto, which I’m using to catch my iPhone 3GS video. That allowed iMovie to see the JPEGs.
I wanted to output High Definition video. iMovie '08’s direct export settings aren’t accurate in terms of what YouTube will accept, so I ignored those. Instead, I exported with QuickTime at 720p, 30 frames-per-second, presuming a 1-Mbit connection.
While exporting, I was not surprised my MacBook Pro was going to take a while to render the video as MPEG-4. But, it did seem excessive, and I remembered, my MBP has a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT card. I typically use the integrated GeForce 9400M graphics since using that card offers better battery life. This export made logging out and switching to the discrete card worthwhile.
I’m a very infrequent user of iMovie, but it seems to be agreeable to my prodding and poking about settings to (mostly) get what I’m after.