4th of July Extravaganza TODAY!!!

[jalenaaron]

It might be to late but it is extremely early in the morning 2:29am and later today we are going to have a 4th of July parade in our city. I need settings for my aperture, shutter, speed, and ISO. Then later we are having concerts and stuff at night time, does anybody have aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings for me. After that we will have fireworks in the i also ned Shutter speed, ISO and aperture.:confused:

[Nicole]

Thankfully, we're from all over, so even though it's 2:29am for you, it's only 6:49pm for me ;) So, you're in luck with getting at least some advice before you head out.

later today we are going to have a 4th of July parade in our city. I need settings for my aperture, shutter, speed, and ISO.

Parades can be tricky because you don't want to get everything in focus or the shot can look really busy. So, you'd want a large aperture, somewhere in the 3.5-5.6 range can be good. Keep your ISO as low as possible, say 200 or lower to avoid noise. Shutter speed will depend on the sort of light that there is at the parade (e.g. whether or not it's sunny). But you'll need a pretty fast shutter speed if it's sunny. I can't tell you an exact shutter speed for that one, but it'll be fast. Experiment a little before the parade starts just taking random shots and you'll be able to tell if you need it to be faster or slower depending on the shots you get before the parade.

Then later we are having concerts and stuff at night time, does anybody have aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings for me.

Concerts and stuff can be tricky because you're dealing with potentially low light in front of you, but bright lights on the stage. Therefore, you might want to increase your ISO slightly. Maybe ISO 400 or 800, and then you should be able to compensate for a slightly faster shutter speed. I wouldn't recommend going less than 1/150 or 1/250 when doing concerts unless you want some motion blur. This can be an interesting effect for some shots, but you probably won't want it for all of them. Your aperture can also be set to something large in order to let as much light in as possible. This will be another situation where you won't want everything to be in focus, just the subject(s). Here are a few threads on concert photography that you may find helpful:

Concert Photos (http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2328)
Tips for Concert Photography (http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1421)
Low Light Action Shots (http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2963)Hopefully some of the tips in those will be helpful for you :)

After that we will have fireworks in the i also ned Shutter speed, ISO and aperture.:confused:

With the fireworks, it will be important to keep your ISO as low as your camera can go because you'll be using long exposures, and long exposures can create more noise even where the ISO is low. So you don't want to add extra noise. If you haven't checked out the post on the DPS Blog on photographing fireworks (http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-photograph-fireworks/), you'll probably want to do that. I'd say you'll want a shutter speed between 2 and 5 seconds in order to capture the trails of the fireworks, and you'll want a small aperture, even as small as say f/22 if your camera lets you. You haven't mentioned the type of camera (or lenses if you have a dSLR) that you'll be using, so this is all based on a dSLR. Key to fireworks is to have a tripod, and if possible a remote. If you don't have a remote, just try not to move the camera when you release the shutter because it can cause the view to shift and lines to be kind of squiggly. Which can look ok if that's what you're going for.

Ok, I think I've covered everything ;) Hope this is helpful and gets to you in time for your extravaganza tomorrow.

[jalenaaron]

[QUOTE=You haven't mentioned the type of camera (or lenses if you have a dSLR) that you'll be using, so this is all based on a dSLR. Key to fireworks is to have a tripod, and if possible a remote. If you don't have a remote, just try not to move the camera when you release the shutter because it can cause the view to shift and lines to be kind of squiggly. Which can look ok if that's what you're going for.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for the tips. I dont know if the Fuji Finepix S7000 is a DSLR or a point and shoot because it has some more advanced features than a small point ans shoot.

P.S. If is is a DSLR how do I change that on my aacount?

[kirbinster]

I just took a bunch this past saturday and here is what I did. Using my Nikon D40 with the 18-55 lens on a tripod with my remote I set the ISO to 200 (lowest it goes) aperature at F7.1 and took most of the shots at between 1-5 seconds. A few I took longer waiting for a second burst to appear on top of the first. They came out really nicely - at least I think so.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8973/firea0001se7.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/1275/fireb0001xh2.jpg

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/1997/firei0001rt7.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2375/firej0001aw6.jpg

[Teewinot]

Thank you for the tips. I dont know if the Fuji Finepix S7000 is a DSLR or a point and shoot because it has some more advanced features than a small point ans shoot.

P.S. If is is a DSLR how do I change that on my aacount?

Hi jalenaaron, your Fuji Finepix S7000 is not a DSLR. SLR (single lens reflex) means you can remove and exchange the lenses. My camera, the Olympus C8080 is similar to yours in that it is packed full of manual features and comes close to an SLR, but in all actuality isn't one. :)

As far as changing your account goes, those labels we have under our usernames don't indicate which camera we use...they are merely rankings to indicate the number of times we've posted to the forum. See this discussion:

http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3466

Hope your Fourth of July shoot goes well!

[Eric]

Well done!