Last night was the second of the three fireworks displays in Vancouver taking place this week, during the Celebration of Light fireworks competition. This display was by the Canadian team, with Thailand's display on Saturday.
I wanted another angle with the fireworks appearing in front of the backdrop of downtown Vancouver, so for this night I went to Lighthouse Park, out in West Vancouver. This is on the opposite side of the Burrard Inlet from Spanish Banks, where I took my previous fireworks shot.
Lighthouse Park is quite heavily wooded, so to avoid having to walk out alone through the dark and bear-infested (in my mind, at least) woods after the display, I roped in a couple of photographers to join me on the trip! (That way, you don't have to outrun the bear, just one of the other photographers!)
Unsurprisingly, as this is a much less-visited location anyway, there were very few people here. We saw two other small groups of people, but they were both quite a long way away from where we were. This meant we had a very wide range of shooting locations, so we chose to set up on the rocks of East Beach, which also has a good view of the Point Atkinson Lighthouse, which we enjoyed photographing during the sunset.
The weather was slightly odd -- some thin clouds in the sky which created some very interesting sunset colours, a lot of haze, and towards the end of the show, what appeared to be lightning to the North -- extremely bright but not at all audible, so it must have been a long way away!
The haze was a little problematic, as this viewpoint is well over 10 kilometres from downtown, so you are looking through a lot of air to take these shots! This means that there is a lot of atmospheric distortion, but the resultant photo is still pretty sharp. It also meant that the 'blue hour' was actually not that blue, although the brown colour in the sky, caused by the haze reflecting the city lights, is an interesting change.
Again, this is a panorama stitched from 4 shots, each at 420mm (300mm + 1.4x teleconverter). I've cropped a little off the edges, so it's closer to a 3-shot panorama now.
Canada's firework display was awesome, far exceeding the UK display, and I think better than any of the displays last year! Thailand will have a difficult job to beat them on Saturday!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
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Fave, this is just so wonderful! A fireworks competition, who knew! I admire the effort you put into finding such a fabulous vantage point, as well. BRAVO!
The value of a teleconverter will depend a lot on the quality of the lens you use it on. My telephoto lens is a very low-end model, so using a teleconverter on it does tend to exacerbate issues with corner sharpness, chromatic aberration, and so on. It also makes my already-slow-to-focus lens even slower. As such, I really only use it when I absolutely have to get the extra range, and when I can combine that with manual focusing and a narrow aperture (f/11 or so, which reduces the optical issues).
If you have a nice fast high-end lens (such as a 70-200mm f/2.8 or other well-specced telephoto lens), then a 1.4x teleconverter can add a useful amount of range without introducing too much loss of sharpness or reducing focus speeds too much. If you don't have a particularly good telephoto lens, I would probably recommend putting the money towards upgrading the lens, rather than adding a teleconverter.
Bear in mind that a 1.4x teleconverter makes the lens a stop narrower than otherwise -- so a lens that is already at f/5.6 at 300mm will act like an f/8 lens at 300mm when you fit the teleconverter. This causes particular problems as (at least for Canon), only the very high-end bodies can autofocus at all with an effective aperture of f/8 -- most of them will not work above f/5.6, so you will only be able to manually focus in these cases.
Unfortunately by the time I'd cropped the boring bits off the edges, as well as excessive sky and water at the top and bottom, the final photo is only about 40 megapixels, which is below the 50 megapixel minimum size for Gigapan. You really need a 500mm or 600mm lens (and less haze) for a really detailed pano from this location!
I'm currently working on a few very high megapixel panoramas (including my first >1000 megapixel panorama), so watch this space!
@abirkill Thank you so much Alexis for the great detail and information! I was planning on using it with my 70-200mm f/4.0 IS lens. I know I will lose a stop to f/5.6. I have been considering getting the 100-400mm lens, but thought about getting the extender instead, since I love the sharpness of the 70-200. Decisions, decisions, lol! Your results here are amazing! Thanks again!
Such a wonderful shot. All the lights of the buildings and the fireworks are so sharp. Not really surprised Canada outdid the UK! I'd love to be there and see it for real. Thanks so much for your support of my project and the couple of favs recently - I really appreciate that encouragement.
Very beautiful.Great capture of the light s and the fireworks. We have an annual firework around my place they then turn off the lights of the buildings etc. so you can appreciate the fireworks even more
Your exif doesn't show your exposure time......would love to know. I have been working carnivals and fireworks between 1.3 and 5 sec depending on the event......I have been honing in on fireworks, and want to be much better. But, I don't live anywhere near a skyline over water. Chicago is too far from my shoreline.
@welcometocarolworld Thanks Carol! I used 6 second exposures for this, mainly to get the detail in the city. If you're just photographing fireworks, one option to try if you have a remote shutter release is to set the camera in bulb mode -- that way you can control the exposure based on what the fireworks are doing, rather than a fixed length.
@abirkill I was varying my exposure at the carnival due to the differences in speeds of the rides. I will have to experiment with bulb there first. Thanks for the info. So much to shoot, so much to learn, so little time.......
Go Canada! Beautiful shot Alexis, I have yet to try shooting fireworks but I really should have made the trek into Vancouver! I think you did a great job, especially from having to shoot that far away. Awesome shot :)
The value of a teleconverter will depend a lot on the quality of the lens you use it on. My telephoto lens is a very low-end model, so using a teleconverter on it does tend to exacerbate issues with corner sharpness, chromatic aberration, and so on. It also makes my already-slow-to-focus lens even slower. As such, I really only use it when I absolutely have to get the extra range, and when I can combine that with manual focusing and a narrow aperture (f/11 or so, which reduces the optical issues).
If you have a nice fast high-end lens (such as a 70-200mm f/2.8 or other well-specced telephoto lens), then a 1.4x teleconverter can add a useful amount of range without introducing too much loss of sharpness or reducing focus speeds too much. If you don't have a particularly good telephoto lens, I would probably recommend putting the money towards upgrading the lens, rather than adding a teleconverter.
Bear in mind that a 1.4x teleconverter makes the lens a stop narrower than otherwise -- so a lens that is already at f/5.6 at 300mm will act like an f/8 lens at 300mm when you fit the teleconverter. This causes particular problems as (at least for Canon), only the very high-end bodies can autofocus at all with an effective aperture of f/8 -- most of them will not work above f/5.6, so you will only be able to manually focus in these cases.
Unfortunately by the time I'd cropped the boring bits off the edges, as well as excessive sky and water at the top and bottom, the final photo is only about 40 megapixels, which is below the 50 megapixel minimum size for Gigapan. You really need a 500mm or 600mm lens (and less haze) for a really detailed pano from this location!
I'm currently working on a few very high megapixel panoramas (including my first >1000 megapixel panorama), so watch this space!
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=404&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=7&API=1&LensComp=113&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=5&APIComp=1
Move your mouse over the chart to switch between the lenses.
To my eye, I cannot detect a noticeable difference in sharpness between the two, and I think the TC'd 70-200mm has a fraction less CA.
Note that this is using the latest 'III' model of Canon's own 1.4x TC -- the earlier 'II' model gives the 70-200mm a great deal of CA and, to my eye, robs it of sharpness compared to the 100-400mm @ 300mm:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=404&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=5&API=1&LensComp=113&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=5&APIComp=1