Just for fun... I want to get a shot of a firecracker exploding. Actually, it's my grandson who wants to try this.

The setup will be in my basement workshop in the after dark hours. We'll cover the window as much as possible so for practical purposes it'll be totally dark.

The firecracker will be ignited by an electric igniter like used used by the model rocket folks.

Camera will be focused on firecracker, lights turned off, shutter in bulb mode. Assuming there is a flash with small firecrackers we should get an image. BTW: the fire cracker is small enough to not cause damage to camera from a 5 to 10 foot distance.

Any thoughts?? Suggestions... Dangers other than the obvious from playing with fireworks..?

I started in photography in 1972 with a Pentax Spotmatic II and a Super Takumar 50mm f1.4. I took thousands of photos with this rig along with a Pentax 35mm wide angle and a Lentar Zoom lens. I went digital 15 years ago buying a Canon XT 8 megapixel body and some kind of zoom lens that I do not remember. Currently I have a Canon 90d with a 24-105L. I also have a couple other lenses to fill in the focal lengths before and after that lens.

Digital photography is great - instant viewing of the image to show composition, sharpness, exposure and DOF. But the thing I love most about digital photography is the ability to reset ISO on the go. In the old film days a roll of film had a given ISO (ASA in those days) and you could not change it until the roll of film was complete. And of course the film types of different ISO’s were limited - 25, 64, 100, 125 speeds were common. TriX which was B&W was 400. These limited ISO’s are the reason most cameras came with a prime lens with a large aperture, f1.4 -2.0 were very common. You could push some films to 1000 if you needed to but then you experienced lots of noise. Today you can set the ISO as high as 3000-4000 without a significant amount of noise. I’ve heard of some people using ISO 10,000 and lowering noise in post. What did we do in the old days when we had 3 exposures left on the roll and the sun was fading? We did not get the shot.

I understand 35mm film photography is making a comeback. I don’t understand that. I will never go back. How about you?

If you think about it, wedding photography is a rip-off from beginning to end.

Folks are spending a large amount of money to 'create' memories' but really, what is left after a few months?

Very little, possibly an image or two on walls that will never be looked at again, a couple of albums that will gather dust until lost during a move.

In a few years the images will be yellow, desuet on some piece of furniture among other equally old and part of a scenery some call home.

Years later the album may be reopened one day by a kid who was snooping around and sees images of a wedding they do not relate to. “Is it you mom? Dad?” Then the album is placed back into a dark corner and forgotten again.

Nostalgia lasts only as long as someone remembers.

When reopened next, it might be when someone cleans out an attic and finds a trace of an event, does not know who is in the pictures, guesses about it for a few moments. The album is placed on a pile, 'keep' if the person wants to look at it again but probably will forget that too. With a little less luck the album ends in an estate sale and those that did not make the cut, the greatest majority, in a literal bin disposed up in a field full of trash... Who wants a cracked, dried up book made of people no one knows?

So thousands of $$$ to fill the dumpster, historical or real...

Those here who speak of the 'ethics' in pricing should stop and think about their 'commodity' offerings and realize that they are ripping up folks who need their revenues toward something more useful than spit in the wind.

Now, yes there is a market so why not profit from folk's gullibility? You must have a photographer because the Jones had one.

At the very least, now, be honest about it when you work, at least in your mind.

I have had good success shooting high quality digital copies of slides using a high resolution camera on a copy stand with light table in a dark room. Because of the orange cast of color negatives, I have been hesitant to convert them into digital images. In thinking the problem through, it would seem that if I shot a single digital image and then white balanced the negative image, I would have an underexposure, once I eliminated the cast. The method I came up with to get a properly exposed digital negative image is to compute the correction I would need to neutralize the orange mask, print the correction on transparent media and use it as a filter when I take the image. I would place it on the light table under the negative. After taking the image, I could invert colors and make any necessary adjustments. Before I started to buy supplies such as transparent media, I was wondering if anyone had tried a similar process.