Fireworks Photographs

I have a new camera!  I'll post more about it later; but for now I'll just say that I got a Sony Alpha NEX-7. And I also just got a little tripod.  So I was excited to try fireworks photography for my first time on Independence Day. However, our 4th of July plans did not go as we had originally planned (for the better), and I ended up at the fireworks with my old camera (Canon PowerShot SX 20 IS) and no tripod.

But I decided I'd still try to make the best of it with the old camera. So I sat in the bleachers, held my camera in my lap and pointed it upward and hoped for the best. It has a flip screen so, I popped it out and rotated it so I could glance down to see if the fireworks were in the field of view.

I used manual mode (which is somewhat limited on that camera) with an ISO of 200, Aperture value of f/8, and a Shutter Speed of 2 seconds.  I pressed the shutter button when I heard/saw the shot start to go up and tired to hold really still.

I got a bunch of great pictures, at least I think so for my first try at this. For most of the images below, I ran the Pioneer Woman Boost action on them, which mostly darkened the black of the sky.  And I sharpened them a little after saving a web-sized file. But they aren't too much different from the SOOC images.

This one is my favorite:

But I love them all!  Well, maybe not this one...

 
I can't wait for the next fireworks to try again.