4th of July Fireworks with the Nikon D90!

This last 4^th of July I had a chance to watch the fireworks in a small town way up in the Cascade Mountains. The town’s fireworks are fired off right next to the river which was a great opportunity for me to capture the reflections of the fireworks on the water. A rushing river isn’t as good as a perfectly flat and calm lake for this type of shot but it will work ok. So I found the only advantage spot the shot would work and planned to get there early to set up. These are two of my favorites from a lot of shots taken and here’s the D90 Settings I used and how I did it.

First you’re going to need a Tripod and a Remote. I used my Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 lens for these shots at 17mm. First set your camera to remote and in settings :C5 set your Remote on Duration to 10 or 15 minutes if it’s not already set. ISO should be set to 200 to reduce noise. Next set you camera to Manual Exposure and rotate the rear Shutter Speed dial to the left until you get to the word BULB. Bulb setting lets you determine with the remote how long you want to leave the shutter open, 1^st click the shutter opens 2^nd click the shutter closes. This is how you get long exposures. The next D90 setting is your aperture. Rotate the Aperture dial on the front of your D90 to set this setting. These photos were taken with the aperture set at F/8 but you can play with this setting. I’ve taken fireworks pictures with the aperture set up to as far as f/18. The last camera set up is to set the D90 to manual focus and focus out to infinity. To focus to Infinity means to turn your focus ring all the way to the left or right where everything in the distance is in focus. I think their is a infinity symbol also on your lens. After the fireworks start you can play with the manual focus but infinity seems best. That’s it for the D90 setup.

Now it’s time to fire off some test shots of the beginning fireworks to get the framing you like. Now for the timing, as soon as you hear the fireworks shoot off into the sky click the remote one time (opening the shutter). Wait until the big explosion in the sky happens and click again (closing the shutter) Check you framing and adjust. Now you’re set to capture away….play with different exposure times and see what you get. That’s it, and that’s how I got my shots. My exposure times for these two shots were 5.1 and 7.6 seconds.

Quick Recap:
Tripod - Camera set to Remote – Remote on Duration set to 10min. – ISO 200 - Manual Exposure Set – Rotate Shutter Dial to BULB – Rotate Aperture Dial to F/8 – Set Focus to Manual – Focus out to Infinity.

Have Fun!

Posted on 10:13 PM / 0 comments / More

Nikon D90 and Photographing Hummingbirds!

See Larger Photo Here

I got a few questions from people asking how i got this photo, so i thought I'd explain my set up!

I picked up a hummingbird feeder at the store and set it up in a tree in my backyard so it was hanging just off my deck behind our BBQ. I used the big BBQ as a kind of blind I could sit behind.

I set up the tripod and placed the d90 on it and focused on the hummimgbird feeder so I would be close to focus when the hummer arrived to feed. I set my camera to shutter speed and dialed in 1/2500 exposure. Aperture was set on F5.6. Focal length with the nikon 70-300mm vr lens was 250mm with VR off.

I set my metering to center-weighted average and auto-focus to Dynamic Area. ISO was at 800 so I could get the faster shutter speed without the picture being to dark. Even at ISO 800 I still had to bump up the exposure compensation to +2 to get more light. That seemed to work best.

My white balance was set manual to sunny but I'm sure auto would have worked fine.
For over 3 days I played with different setting and my speedflash (SB600) trying to find what worked best for me and these setting I used for this photo seemed to be the best.

It was fun capturing these little guys coming into feed i hope you give it a try and post your best shot so we can all see.

Posted on 10:07 AM / 0 comments / More

Full Moon Photography with the Nikon D90!

We have a full moon coming in a few days and i thought I'd go over how i set up my D90 to photograph it!
The photo above was taken from my back porch last full moon. First you probably want to wait until the moon is high in the sky and really dark outside for the best results. You'll want at least a 300mm lens but a 200mm lens will also work. If your using a lens with VR don't forget to turn it off while your D90 is on the tripod. Get your Tripod set up with your D90 and set you camera to Manual (M) on the dial. Set your metering to, Center-weighted Metering (not that important but i like to do this) and Manual focus.
Next set your aperture to F/11 and shutter speed to 1/400 for starters. Get out your remote release (ML-L3) to fire off your shots... Adjust your exposure as you shoot to get it just right.
The exposure settings I have given are just a good starting point for you and is what I used on the photo above. That's it, Have Fun! If you have any other suggestions for shooting a full moon please let us know. Always learning.....

Posted on 10:59 AM / 0 comments / More

Photographing Waterfalls with the Nikon D90!

Waterfall photography is one of the things i like to do any chance i get!
This last weekend i woke up to a nasty rainy day and did not want to spend my day off setting around the house. I googled waterfalls in my area and found this place only 30 minutes away from my house were it said these falls only happen after a good rain.
So i grabbed the family and all my gear and out the door we went. Timing is everything when shooting waterfalls, and a overcast day is best in my opinion since sunny days can cause bad highlights in waterfalls because of the shutter speed you need to use. The key to getting that silky smooth moving water effect requires a longer shutter speed of 1 - 2 seconds or what i used in this shot of 1/3 of a second.
So here's the basic set-up i used with my D90 to get this shot. I put on my Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 lens and a Hoya Polarizer filter and mounted the D90 on my tripod. I then found a good vantage spot in the water were i didn't get to wet (thanks to gore-tex boots) and set the camera to manual exposure. I set my aperture to F/10 and the shutter speed to 1/3 of a second to get that silky smooth moving water effect i was looking for and started shooting away with my remote release and that was basically it! Everything else on the D90 was standard.
I hope you get a chance to photography some waterfalls this way because it's pretty darn fun and easy! For more advanced techniques on shooting waterfalls here's a good web site you might like.
http://digital-photography-school.com/waterfall-digital-photography

Posted on 2:19 PM / 0 comments / More