Fireworks - Day 278

You really can't pass up Forth of July without fireworks, right?  I have never taken pictures of fireworks, so I wasn't really sure how it was going to turn out.  Last night we got home around 9:30 from a weekend of visiting family.  We were all pretty tired and didn't really want to drive anywhere.  Out neighbors do big time fireworks, so we just went over there.  Here are a few pictures from the, I am sure, perfectly legal fireworks from last night:

I am not sure if you really care how I took the pictures or not, but I will tell you anyways.  I ended up using my 18-55mm zoom lens, which I didn't really want to use, since the f-stop is only down to about 5.6.  So, almost all of these are with 18mm, f5.6.  I took 5 second exposures for most of the pictures.  Some I did 1-2 second, but it is amazing how much diversity there is in the brightness of the fireworks.  After an extremely bright set, I would set it down to 1 second, and the next set would be much more dim, so I would go back up, grrrr. I took a few with the repeat on the camera, but couldn't figure out how to remove the 10 second delay before it started taking the 10 pictures.  Hmmmm, maybe I should read the manual, eh?  For about 1/2 the pictures, I put on a 2 second delay and 5 second exposure, so when the firework launched, I hit the button.  For most of the others I had no delay and just kept hitting the button over and over and over again.  This worked pretty well.  I think the only thing that I will change for next year is to get a wider aperture lens with a little better light sensitivity.  Just need more money.