Well, like I said, I never let acute guilt about the role of the US in world politics keep me from a barbecue. We had our friends John and Lindz over for a really nice barbecue yesterday to celebrate the holiday in style. They brought their dog Chai, whom Sybil and Ruby were really glad to see, and we had a nice time; first hanging out inside and then moving out to the patio to grill and relax. Unlike our last cookout, it wasn’t too windy to talk; however, we almost missed the wind, since there were swarms of gnats instead. A light dusting of DEET-enabled bug spray and a citronella candle later, we were in business. Brats, burgers, corn, cheap beer–the All-American summer meal, amirite?
Afterwards we retired to our building’s sundeck, a really nice facility whose location had been a mystery to Kristy and I until last night. We got a nice late-afternoon / early-evening view of the city as the sun sank. We played a few rounds of Uno, but of the three hands we played, I was the only one not to win. Dick bastards.
As dusk gathered about us, we gathered our possessions and headed out to an “underground” fireworks show in Ukrainian Village, whose organizers/performers we are to varying degrees acquainted with. He’s a really cool guy, and in the image at left, he’s demonstrating why I describe the event as an underground show. Yes, that’s a real 6″ shell; it made a pretty impressive skyburst. There were literally hundreds of these, and it went on for at least 45 minutes. It was quite honestly better than I remember the 4th of July fireworks in my hometown being, and it was put on by a bunch of well-connected amateurs. The show has apparently been going for years now, and the whole neighborhood turned out to watch. The cop cruisers circled, but seemed to be looking for trouble at the fringes of the crowd, ignoring the pyrotechnics in the parking lot. Had we not eaten first, there were plenty of tasty-smelling kebabs making the rounds, and the smell of cooked brats mingled with the sulfuric tang of the display all night. Needless to say, I was there with my camera set up to try to capture the air show.
So, photography. I checked with the guy who had invited us all to make sure that photography was permitted. You know, “underground show” and all. It was enthusiastically encouraged, so I hauled out my tripod and set it up pointing at the sky. It’s amazing how unselfconscious I’m getting about it by now–at long last! Since it was going to be right over us, I swapped out the 50mm prime that I’d used to excellent effect on the 3rd for my 18-55mm zoom, so as to cover the greatest possible area of sky; I could use it wide-open without fear of vignetting, because a) I wanted to stop it down anyways so I could leave the lens open and b) I was taking pictures of a dark sky! Everything was looking great on the screen when I occasionally checked it for proper exposure. Not only were the histograms showing that I was “doing it right,” but the photos were good too. Of course, you might guess that I wouldn’t elaborate on this unless something were actually going wrong…
Fig. 1: Looking good on-camera…
Fig. 2: Oh fuck.
Heartbreak. This is what I forgot, when I switched lenses: the 18-55mm zoom is a piece of absolute shit when it comes to manual focus. First of all, distances are unmarked, making any manual focus dodgy. But that’s ok, right? because I’m shooting with a fairly deep aperture at stuff that’s far away–I can just set focus to infinity, and the depth of field will sweep in anything more than 50 feet away. Sadly, unlike any other lens I’ve used, turning the manual focus all the way to the end is not “infinity”; instead, it’s “nothing.” Perhaps that is why this lens had to be refurbed, perhaps it’s just a bad design, but you can actually place the manual focus adjuster so that literally nothing is in focus. Which is what I cleverly did, so that I could shoot more shots because I wouldn’t have to wait for autofocus on each one. About 2/3 of the way through the evening, I realized my horrible mistake, but by then we were on to the finale, and smoke obscured a lot of the effects, leaving a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been.
Fig. 3: Even looks better at this distance
Fig. 4: Aha, focused correctly
What I should have done: first, I shouldn’t have assumed infinity focus would work. I could have sacrificed a few of the effects, not taking pictures in order to use them for finding focus–this is what I ended up doing later. Alternatively, I could have let autofocus handle the first one, and then switched the camera to manual focus after I’d found the right distance. I could have bought a lens, like the Tokina 11-16mm that I’m lusting after right now, that actually has proper infinity focus. Finally, I could just relax, as Kristy suggests, and realize that although a lot of my pictures aren’t as focused as I’d like them, they still turned out really well. And there’s always next year, right?
Disappointment aside, I did add a few decent tricks to my arsenal. Using manual focus DID allow me to snap freely–with no focus time, the shutter opened immediately when I asked it to. I tried using my remote for a shutter release, so that my hand wouldn’t jitter the camera, but the mechanics of bulb mode with the remote (press to open, press to close) ended up being too difficult to be practical for high-speed use. I left the camera in bulb mode, but I used the shutter release button instead (press to open, release to close). This let me open the shutter right when I knew the shell was going to explode and release as soon as I thought it had made the effect I wanted. I figured out that there was a reason my tripod’s panning release has a variety of degrees of tension, too–by tightening it halfway, I could still pan the camera up, but it offered enough resistance that I could pan to where a firework was and snap a .5s – 1.5s exposure without my hand on the unlocked tripod causing any visible jitter. I worked most of the night that way, panning up to the shell, holding the shutter, releasing.
Between the new things that I picked up and the hard reminder that I got, I’m going to take some amazing pictures next time I’m near fireworks.
