Tag Archives: fireworks

NYE 2011 Fireworks

I got a real camera for Christmas, a Canon DSLR, and the perfect time to take it out was the fireworks spectacular on New Year’s Eve for some tripod-assisted long-exposure photography.

Of course, I don’t actually have a tripod yet, so I had to go with a friend who was also interested in doing a similar thing. I borrowed one of his tripods, and off we went…

First we had to actually find a spot. Nutgrove Beach seemed like a good candidate, but it turned out it might have been a little too far away.

Admittedly, the above photo was taken at a focal length of 18mm (28.8 35mm equiv), but even at 135mm (216) I think it would have still been sub-par. You might have gotten Wrest Point in the shot, though.

We relocated to somewhere a little closer to Wrest Point, just on Sandy Bay Road.

I’m not sure that would have been any better. Slightly, but still not all that great.

Gratuitous iPhone shot of the “family” fireworks from basically the Wrest Point carpark entrance. Not bad, but even better when done on a DSLR:

After that we had about a few hours until the actual fireworks started, so we decided to play around with some more long exposure photography.

And then I did some shots I’ve always wanted to do… (They’ve been done to death, yeah, but I hadn’t shot them before.)

We looked at a few other places, but ultimately ended up across the river for the main event.

Blue dot is us, purple pin is where they launched the fireworks from (or thereabouts). We were right on the edge of the water, so a little closer than what the blue dot actually says we were…

10 second exposure at 69mm at f/5.6. No post, because I’m not exactly the type (and haven’t quite figured out how yet).

Diablo 2 is AWESOME!!

Really, it is.

I hadn’t got into this game back when it was actually popular, but after purchasing the Battle Chest from game.com.au, it’s fantastic. Really is the best old-school RPG ever made.

The thing about Blizzard (the publishers of Diablo 2 and it’s expansion, Lord of Destruction), is that they manage to include both Mac and PC versions of their games on the same disc. This includes their whole product catalog, including greats such as Starcraft (I own the Battle Chest), Warcaft 3 (I also own the Battle Chest), and Diablo 2 (Indeed, I own the Battle Chest). Even some of the more recent games like World of Warcraft – sadly, I don’t own the Battle Chest, but it’s far too time-consuming an RPG for my liking. No single-player offline mode either.

No other software company, as far as I know, manages to include both Mac and PC versions of their apps on the same disc. Shame on you. If Blizzard can do it, why can’t you?!

Anyway. The weekend was fully hectic y’all, two 18ths in the one weekend is just enough for one person. Congrats to Ash P, Paul C, and Felicity J. ON the down side, my clothes now smell very smoky – but on the plus, I got to play Wii Sports and Super Smash Bros. Brawl!

However, I did manage to open a bottle with my fairly-old, bottle-opener-equipped, Billabong belt… I have to say, I did feel tough. I’ve owned that belt for a good 4 or so years, and this was the first time ever that I had used the bottle-opener feature. On a belt. It begs the question: what was I thinking when I bought it?!

There’s a weekend wrap-up from Chris on freshbytes if you’re interested – if not, take a look at some of the fireworks at Paul’s (thanks to Emily L for the camera footage, apologies for the utter crap quality):