13 replies to this topic

[PyroKid]

Hey Guys!

Hows it going?

As you may or may not know, tomorrow (saturday 2nd september 2006) marks the date of the Shugborough Fireworks Festival taking place at the Shugborough Estate near Staffordshire.

This night plays host to no less than 4 spectacular fireworks displays all set to music by 4 display companies.

This years event hosts shows from Northern Lights, Westcoast Fireworks, Orzella Fireworks, and Jubilee Fireworks.

I will be present crewing with Westcoast Fireworks so if anyone is interested in coming down to cheer us on that would be great! Gates open 5:00 PM, Displays start 8:45PM (Aprox)

Hope to see u there!

All the best!

[Creepin_pyro]

I'll be there, family in tow : ) Look out for the bearded youth at the back standing between two big shiny tripods.

Can't wait to see what Orzella have in store - their demo last year was fantastic!

Any chance of a firing site tour?

Let's hope the weather holds!

[PyroKid]

Hi Creepin, hows it going?

With regards to the site visit, i have alredy spoken to richard about this and to be honest, i dont know how feasable this is as i would have to have a word with chris and i guess it would depend on how busy we are etc.

With regards to the weather, richard has informed me that we are pretty much in for a torrential downpour!

There sure is nothin like a wet + windy rigging session!

Oh well, all in a days work i guess ......

All the best!

[Richard H]

Have uploaded my pics...

http://www.flickr.co...57594267255876/

[fishy1]

Wow, those pics are amazing, very crisp. The fireworks don't look bad either.

[Spyrotechnics]

what did people think of the actual displays then?

[PyroKid]

Hi Guys, Hows it going?

Before i go any further i would just like to appologise about the site visit - we were somewhat limited by the fact that we only had 5 crew members attending the event which meant that we were in a bit of a rush to get everything set-up in time which unfortunately meant that a site - visit was out of the question on this occasion, however, with that aside, i hope you enjoyed the show and that the rain didnt put you guys off!

We were due to be firing first however there was a last minute alteration which meant that we were to fire second which was in fact to our advantage considering that we had problems with our firing system at first due to the damp weather conditions but we eventually got everything up and running and put on a truely spectacular performance!

I couldnt help but feel sorry for orzello who came all the way from Italy to put on a show in order to find that the majority of their fireworks failed to ignite for one reason or another :-(

Jubilee put on a truely spectacular finale which rounded off a great evening of explosive entertainment!

Thats about it for now, hope to see you at southport where we will be firing on the 22nd September!

All The Best!

[Creepin_pyro]

Just uploaded some of my pics - you'll have to download then unzip the file to view them. It's about 9Mb.

http://creeper.250fr...Shugborough.zip

Regarding the evening, I (and the people I attended who were also there last year) thought overall last years event was better, mainly because the shells were further away this time. The displays themselves were good, although it was a damned shame Orzella had those technical difficulties - their 'demo' last year was really fantastic, and I had very high expectations for this year.

Not sure about the 'daytime' display - I would've loved to see more smoke and hear a whole load more salutes, although the parachute effects were pretty cool. The flag parachute at the end was a nice touch!

Still though, a great evening was had by all, and a few of my 'non-pyro' friends commented on how the displays were amongst the best they had ever seen - I guess you have to be a pyro to really notice the problems, although the gaps in Orzella's display were pretty obvious.

By the way Richard, great photos, but I think you might want to try stopping down a few more F-stops. Blown highlights are very tricky to sort out, but shadow detail can easily be brought out. The photos I posted were all taken at around F20-F24.

[karlfoxman]

Fecking spanking pictures mate! Love the way the colours come out, out of interest how close to the actual colour are the pictures? Gutted we didnt go, looks like they had some nice gear, I saw some kaleidoscope multicolour shells in one picture, mmmmm and some layered cakes.

[Richard H]

Some good shots there. You pick the mines up very well! What ISO did you use? Seems to be quite a bit of grain in some of the pictures, or is that just an artefact of JPEG compression?

At the moment have experimented between f/8 - f/11 with good results. Might do some experiments with smaller apertures at Southport. It does seem there is a sacrifice between colour and brilliance and I must say I do prefer the look you get using the larger apertures. Other settings are usually ISO100, and good old bulb setting.

I suppose given the nature of the subject there is always going to be compromise!

[Ritual33]

Truely amazing pics, great respect from me

[PyroKid]

Hi Guys, Hows it going?

Just a quick one really to let you know that i am well impressed with everyones photos.

Keep up the good work :-)

All the best!

[Creepin_pyro]

OK... deep breath...

karl - the colour tones themselves should be pretty accurate as I didn't perform any colour/white balance correction, but I think I know why you might think they look a little odd - they're more saturated than normal.

If you look at some random pyro photos (search 'fireworks' on google images for instance) you should notice that for long exposures of colour stars (particularly metal-fuelled ones), the star trail tends to be recorded as a very thin white line with a coloured fringe. By stopping the lens down, the trail becomes more and more saturated until eventually the white centre dissapears, as the whole picture darkens. Of course, this also means that any effect with a low light output in the same exposure will be much darker than usual, and must be brought back up in post-processing, which can lead to excessive noise if you're not careful (I wasn't this time!)

As Richard pointed out, there will always be some degree of compromise with photographing fireworks, (especially with the reduced dynamic range of digital) due to the widely-varying brightness of fireworks. If I was taking photos of individual shells being fired (and was aware of the specifics of each one) I would be able to individually tailor each exposure to the brightness of the stars, but sadly this is very rarely possible.

This was my first try at this method of under-exposing and post-processing, and I hope to perfect the technique over time. Was pleased overall with the first batch though. I have slowly aquired a kind of hatred for blown-highlights in photos, and this is the main inspiration for the experimentation.

Richard - I always use ISO100, except sometimes when I'm not doing the normal bulb exposure. I only just realised quite how much noise there is in some of the shots (viewing them at 100% on a massively high-res monitor they looked much better!). This will have to be looked at carefully next time I process them - thanks for the heads-up!. If you have Photoshop, try under-exposing some of your photos, then playing with the "Shadow/Highlight" filter.

Hope I haven't bored/confused anyone too much with the above

[BrightStar]

Amazing pics creepin - some of the best I have seen.

Everything has come together here - your timing and composition, the 30D's low light noise performance, the L-series glass and the rich reds from the Adobe RGB colour space. (you'll note a hint of envy on seeing the EXIF - if I could get a camera for fireworks, this would be it...) The mines are stunning.

My lenses loose sharpness beyond about f16, so I might try a ND filter to see if I can get the same colours.

Fantastic work though.

Edited by BrightStar, 29 September 2006 - 07:30 AM.