Fireworks Photos with a Long Zoom Lens: A Better Approach
Photographing fireworks from a distance of several kilometers can be tricky if your tripod setup is not absolutely stable, especially when using long exposures. I used a Nikon Z30 with the 50–250mm lens on a tripod, aiming to capture sharp bursts with surrounding buildings in the frame:
📸 Fireworks Photography: The Classic Recipe
Here is the standard setup for capturing fireworks:
ISO: 100 (or as low as your camera allows)
Aperture: f/8 to f/11 for sharpness and depth
Shutter Speed: 2 to 10 seconds (use BULB mode and adjust based on burst duration)
Focus: Manual, set to infinity or pre-focus on a distant object
White Balance: Daylight or Auto
Stabilization: Use a tripod and disable VR
Remote Trigger: Optional, but helps avoid camera shake
This setup works great when you're close to the action and using a standard or wide-angle lens. But what if the fireworks are several kilometers away, you're shooting with a long zoom, and your tripod setup isn't exactly rock-solid? That's where things get interesting.
The Problem
While the fireworks were crisp, the buildings appeared blurry. The cause is vibrations from people walking nearby and the long shutter time (several seconds). Even if you take pictures without a tripod and have VR enabled, the system could not stabilize the image over such long exposures.
And tripods, especially on unstable surfaces, don't eliminate this issue. Using shorter shutter speeds helps reduce motion blur, but it introduces a new challenge: you often miss the perfect moment. Sometimes, all it takes is a fraction of a second to turn a potential masterpiece into a chaotic blur of light.
13,0s f/8,0 ISO 100/21° f=200mm/300mm
The Solution: Slow-Shutter Video
Switching to video mode at 1/25s shutter speed solved the problem:
Sliding through the video to capture the perfect frame as a new level of content creation
No motion blur in buildings or other static elements
Fireworks still looked vibrant and dynamic
Overall stabilization was noticeably better
You lose the long light trails typical of multi-second exposures, but the bursts remain visually striking.
Instead of hoping to hit the perfect moment with a single shot, just extract stills from the exact frame you want. For example, using VLC (Shift+S or Menu → Video → Take Snapshot) makes it easy to grab high-quality frames directly from your footage.
Video resolution these days is 3840×2160. Not far off from stills at 5568×3712 with my camera. That's more than enough to crop, zoom, and relive every spark in crisp detail: gone are the days of grainy VGA 640×480 clips from early digital cameras. The kind that looked halfway decent on a VHS-era TV. This isn't VHS anymore. This is IMAX, and you are in the front row.
Selling lenses (and 📷) is easy. At least according to the offers from small and large camera dealers.
Advertising with 'up to 70% of retail' should have the focus on 'up to'.
Here is my result: Quotes from camera sites and then selling at eBay at the average eBay price.
If the value is 0, they didn't want the lens.
The quote from Adorama required to send in the lenses, but I was told the estimate would be around 500. B&H's is similiar price, but there is an exception for the Nikon AI-S 28-85 f/3.5-4.5. Seems like a very sought-after lens, but not for MBP.
So far, B&H pays best for those (vintage) lenses.
The last two lenses I decided to keep, but I had them added to the quote to check. Would you sell for this price?
NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a convenient solution for storing pictures, videos, and all your other files. The NAS device is typically configured as RAID-1, utilizing two disks to ensure data is mirrored in case one disk fails thereby improving resilience. It connects to your local network, providing reliable and accessible storage, but it is not a backup.
Backing up files from a NAS device is very important to ensure data integrity and availability.
Many NAS systems, such as my Synology NAS, come equipped with backup software like Hyper-Backup. Unfortunately those software is getting slower over time during a backup run for some reason.
And do not copy your files over the network to a drive attached to your computer. This process is slow and there's a risk of the connection dropping.
Using PuTTY, a popular SSH client, and simple Linux commands, you can efficiently perform backups and verify them running on the NAS. Here’s a step-by-step guide.
Prerequisite
NAS devices typically feature USB ports, allowing you to connect an external hard drive of the required size directly to the NAS via USB. External drives are available in two main types: SSD (Solid State Drives) and HDD (Hard Disk Drives with spinning disks). I'm using HDD because of their long-term data retention capabilities, but SSDs are faster and maybe perfect for frequent short term backups. The drive connects to the system with a path like /volumeUSB1/usbshare1-2. Simply check with the cd and dir command.
Step 1: Connect to your NAS using PuTTY
Download and Install PuTTY.
Open PuTTY and enter the IP address of your NAS in the "Host Name (or IP address)" field. Default Port is 22.
Login: Click "Open" and log in using your NAS credentials. You should now have access to the NAS embedded Linux console.
Step 2: Backup Files using the cp command
The cp command of the embedded Linux system of the NAS is used to copy files and directories.
To backup files from your NAS to another drive, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Source Directory:
cd /volume1
For large data sets, the copy process can take several days, and the PuTTY terminal may disconnect, closing the command. To prevent this, use the nohup command to keep the process running even if the terminal disconnects.
While commands like screen or tmux can be used to detach from the current terminal session, they are not always available on every system. At least, it is not available on the Synology NAS.
Copy Files to the Backup Location using cp command with nohup:
If you only want to back up specific folders, list those folders in the cp command instead of using the dot (.), which copies everything. Enclose folder names that contain spaces in quotes.
The nohup command immediately returns and provides a process ID (PID). You can use the ps or htop command to check for this PID if it is still running in later sessions. Use the kill command with this PID to stop the backup.
Step 3: Verify the Backup using the diff command
To ensure that the backup is identical to the original files, you can use the diff command to compare the contents of the source and backup directories.
diff -qr /volume1 /volumeUSB1/usbshare1-2/backup
If the directories are identical, diff will not produce any output. If there are differences, it will list the differing files.
For large file sets, use the nohup command to not rely on the active terminal session. Any output will be written to the redirected file (for example /var/services/tmp/diff.txt) and can be checked later.
Uses the Gamepad Input shield and Arduino Uno R4. Wiring info is in the src.
Up/down button/joystick changes task, and left/right button/joystick changes state/setting.
With the first 8x8 LED block to illuminate the darkroom.
