A Starry Trail

A stack of 60 exposures shot at 42mm, f/5, ISO 400 and 30 seconds.

I did not have a shutter release then and clicking a pic after every 30 seconds was tiring and cumbersome. Anyway, I liked this outcome and look forward to doing a better star trail soon.

I fell into a burning ring of fire

f/16, 53 sec, ISO 100 @ 18mm using the 18-55

This was one peculiar pattern of lightning. Was pretty overwhelming when it occurred.

I shot a star

f/11, 25sec, ISO 800 @  21mm using the 18-55

This was shot when I didn't have the remote shutter release, hence bulb mode was not an option. However, even a 30 second shutter speed was causing overexposure due to the light pollution and I had to overcome this by holding a folded newspaper in front of the lens whenever there were no fireworks in the sky.

Highway to Hell

f/13, 30sec, ISO 200 @ 18mm using the 18-55

This was shot when my camera was barely 15 days old and I didn't own a tripod or a shutter release back then. Kept the camera on a wall and used the self timer of the camera.

Mops in the air

f/11, 30 sec, ISO 400 @ 18mm using the 18-55

This was shot when I didn't have the remote shutter release, hence bulb mode was not an option. However, even a 30 second shutter speed was causing overexposure due to the light pollution and I had to overcome this by holding a folded newspaper in front of the lens whenever there were no fireworks in the sky.

Thor's Day Out

f/11, 60 sec, ISO 100 @ 18mm using the 18-55. Tripod mounted with remote shutter release.

Patience, patience and some more patience is what is needed for shots of lightning and fireworks in the sky. Focusing at (a little less than) infinity is easy, preempting the position of the strike is not.

Light Painting with Fireworks

f/14, 16sec, ISO 100 @ 41mm using the 18-55
Tripod mounted using remote shutter release to eliminate camera shake

Most of the credit to this image should go to my friend, Darvinder (Shanky) who did this wonderful light painting using basic Diwali sparklers. Focusing was difficult because of the extreme lowlight, had to overcome this by asking him to hold a cellphone where he was standing so that that I could manually pre-focus at that point using Live View.