Curt Long

Curt Long

Review: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ and the Importance of Small Stories in Big Universes

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In Hollywood, it’s all about size. Big budgets, supersized casts, boffo box office openings. And in that world, there is perhaps nothing larger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If Avengers: Infinity War proved anything, it’s that the MCU had earned its scope. It would make sense, then, that the latest installment—Ant-Man and the Wasp—would look to hitch its wagon to its bonafide stars. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t need to. It has, to borrow the internet’s latest mini-meme, BDE.

Before we get into that, or any more size jokes, a few points of clarity. Ant-Man and the Wasp takes place pretty much concurrently with Infinity War. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) briefly mentioned in that movie that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) would be sitting out the battle with Thanos, and in his standalone movie we find out why: His jaunt to Germany in Captain America: Civil War put him in violation of the Sokovia Accords, which forced him into house arrest in the Bay Area. So while the other Avengers were fighting Thanos out in the galaxy and in the fields of Wakanda, Ant-Man was stuck at home. How his story will tie in with the greater MCU isn’t even truly revealed until the (very good, but terrible to spoil) post-credits scene—a throwback to the time when all of the Marvel movies’ But wait, there’s more! moments teased the massive team-up to come.

And really, that’s exactly what an Ant-Man movie needs. Frankly, it’s what the MCU needs. After a few films where the fate of the entire universe hung in the balance—Infinity War, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok—Marvel needed a palate-cleanser, a movie that wasn’t all-or-nothing. And while director Peyton Reed’s movie trashes a few San Francisco tourist destinations, no country is decimated, and no planet gets pummeled. Hela, the Goddess of Death, is nowhere to be found. It’s just a little side-hustle about Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) trying to rescue Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer)—their wife and mother, respectively—from the quantum realm. It’s a Post-It Note reminder of an adventure.

And it’s a fantastic time. The setup: Scott is a just a few days away from completing his house arrest when he has a dream about Janet Van Dyne, a quantum entanglement that provides the key her family needs to get her out after being stuck there for 30 years. (An unanswered question: Where does one eat/sleep/poop in the quantum realm, which basically looks like a floor-less hot-box tent at Coachella?) But, as is always the case, getting Janet out isn’t that simple—especially since they’re trying to do it while a gangster, played by a wonderfully maniacal Walton Goggins, and a new mysterious villain called Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) both vie for control of Pym’s lab and all the technology inside.

This kind of tightly-constructed story not only avoids the problems other recent Marvel movies have had with trying to do too much, it also gives the movie time to breathe, to develop characters and build worlds, without having to shift focus to a whole new location and collection of heroes every 10 minutes.

This kind of tightly-constructed story not only avoids the problems other recent Marvel movies have had with trying to do too much, it also gives the movie time to breathe, to develop characters and build worlds, without having to shift focus to a whole new location and collection of heroes every 10 minutes. All of which is to say, it lets Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp grow—and steal the show. Ant-Man may get top billing, but Hope is the one driving the action. (I mean that literally, she hits the streets of San Francisco like Steve McQueen in Bullitt.) Not only does she get the better fight scenes, she also delivers a fair share of one-liners, which isn’t an easy task in a movie that brought back Michael Peña’s Luis for some grand scene larceny. And when it comes to world-building, the Ant-Man sequel delves even further into the quantum realm, showing its many wrinkles and rainbows in a way reminiscent of how Doctor Strange built out its various mystical realms. It also, in a nod to super science nerds, features tardigrades, the microscopic “water bears” that look like pill bugs in khakis.

Then there’s the matter of Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s breadth, which, wisely, focuses simply on Scott Lang’s attempt to help Hank and Hope while not getting caught for violating his parole. It’s efficient, and feels like a turn of events that could take place in the time allotted. Marvel movies have always had strange scopes: They’re massive events of global (or galactic) significance that often begin and end in under a week. It’s hard to tell since the sun never sets in space, but I’d estimate the massive fights of Infinity War wrapped up in about 48 hours of real time. Ant-Man and the Wasp completes its full arc in a smooth 36, give or take, along with a comfortably digestible two-hour run time. And that’s all the time it needs—in both duration and story—to unspool its plot and catch Scott and Hope up with all of the Avengers, chronologically speaking. Everything you need in one tiny time capsule.

Truly, lean-and-meanness is Ant-Man and the Wasp’s greatest gift. After a few films full of all-you-can-eat chest-thumping, Reed’s movie is a necessary digestif, all the joys of a Marvel movie shrunk down into a quick caper that cuts through the post-Infinity War fog. Yes, this is all part of Marvel’s design. The studio knew it needed a breather between that film and next year’s Captain Marvel. But that doesn’t mean that Ant-Man and the Wasp, with all of their ease and banter, shouldn’t saunter in and have a little fun. The payoff is huge—even if the movie isn’t.

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How to Check App Permissions on iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS

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You probably spend a lot of your day inside apps: catching up on the news, playing music and movies, keeping in touch with friends, racing cartoon characters around a track, and so on. Every once in a while though, it’s worth running an audit on these apps to make sure they’re not overreaching and going beyond their remit—collecting more data about you and controlling more of your devices than you’d like.

Here’s how you can put controls on what your apps are allowed to do on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Choosing App Permissions

App permissions are the privileges an app has—like being able to access your phone’s camera or your laptop’s contact list—but deciding which ones to switch on or off isn’t an exact science.

Granting those permissions isn’t in and of itself a mistake; generally, trusted developers won’t request anything they don’t need for the app to function, even if that purpose isn’t immediately clear. Facebook Messenger asks for access to your microphone, for instance, not because it’s eavesdropping on you but because it has a voice-memo function.

That said, if you don’t plan on ever using that feature, you might as well disallow it. Similarly, an app might request access to your contacts so you can more easily share a link or split a bill with someone—it isn’t necessarily harvesting all your contact data and putting it in a database somewhere. But if blocking that contact access doesn’t break basic functionality? Go for it.

If you really want to dig deep into these permissions, check out the app’s data and privacy policy as well, which should explain what it does with the data that gets collected (like your location or contacts list). These policies are often couched in vague language, but they should help you decide what to disallow.

Even if you don’t make any changes though, it’s still a good idea to be aware of what privileges you’re giving to your apps. When in doubt, check the app listing or website for details. If you’re lucky (and the developers have done their job), you might find a list of requested permissions and what they’re used for.

Again, this can help in choosing which ones to switch off. If disabling a certain permission causes the app to misbehave or become less useful—you turn off phone-location access in your favorite mapping app, for example—then you can always turn it back on. Here’s how to do both on all the major platforms.

Android App Permissions

Android comes in a variety of flavors depending on which manufacturer makes the phone, but here we’ll list the required steps for the stock version of Android installed on the Google Pixel. Your version may not match exactly, but you should be able to find something similar on your handset.

Open up the Settings app and head to the Apps & notifications menu. Then, tap on the app you want to look at (if you can’t spot it, tap See all). Tap on Permissions to see everything the app has access to: A messaging app, for instance, might have access to SMS. To turn off a permission, tap on it. If the permission is particularly important to the app, you might have to tap a confirmation box.

A more comprehensive list of permissions can be found by tapping App permissions on the Apps & notifications screen. Here you can browse by permission—from microphone access to call logs—and switch off any you’re not comfortable with. As before, you’ll be warned if you’re disabling a permission that an app significantly relies on.

If you notice an app behaving strangely after you’ve removed a certain permission, or part of the app no longer works, you need to decide whether to allow the permission or live without that particular bit of functionality.

iOS App Permissions

As on Android, iOS apps request permissions as and when they need them, though you’ll usually see a flurry of requests—including one to show notifications—when you first install something new. You can revoke these permissions at any time.

From the Settings app, tap Privacy to see all the permissions available on your phone: access to photos, motion and fitness data, your phone’s location, and so on. Tap on any entry to see the apps granted those permissions and to disable those permissions, if necessary.

The exact choices vary depending on the permission. For location data, for example, you can grant access to an app all the time or only when the app is open. With Apple Health data, meanwhile, you can give an app access to certain bits of data, like the hours you’ve slept, but not others, like the steps you’ve walked.

Scroll down the Settings screen beyond the Privacy menu to find individual app entries. Tap on any app to access the same permissions as before, plus some extra ones—like access to notifications and permission to use cellular data as well as Wi-Fi. Again, a simple tap on an option or toggle switch is enough to grant or refuse a permission.

Windows App Permissions

As Windows 10 has evolved over time, it’s become more smartphone-like in the way it handles apps, and that includes the way it handles app permissions. Click the cog on the Start menu to open Settings, then pick Privacy to see what your installed apps are allowed to do on the OS.

The options are sorted by permission rather than by app, so click any of the entries on the left side to see apps with access: Location, Camera, Pictures, and so on. Each screen looks slightly different, but if you scroll down you’ll see a list of apps associated with that permission. You can grant or revoke them with a click on the relevant toggle switch.

With all of these permissions, you can turn off app access completely: For example, you might decide you don’t want any of your applications using your webcam. Note though that these screens cover apps installed only from the Windows Store and some apps bundled with Windows, like Mail and Cortana.

For full desktop apps with access to all your system resources, like Photoshop, there’s no easy way of controlling permissions; these apps may have some options available in their respective preferences boxes, but otherwise you’ll have to completely uninstall any that you aren’t happy with.

MacOS App Permissions

Finally to macOS, which has a simple and straightforward permissions management screen that closely resembles the one in iOS. To find it, open up the Apple menu, then choose System Preferences. From there, click Security & Privacy, then open the Privacy tab.

Here you can see all the permission categories, from location to app analytics. Click on any of the entries on the left side to see which apps have requested and been given permission. The screens look slightly different depending on which permission you’re dealing with, but they’re all straightforward.

To make changes to permissions, click the lock icon on the lower left, then enter your macOS username and password to confirm you have the authority to modify these settings. You can then untick the box next to any permission you’re not happy with. Note that the changes won’t be applied to open apps until they’re restarted.

As on Windows, desktop applications are of course more complex than their mobile counterparts, so you might find more permission and privacy options by delving into the programs themselves—most will have a preferences pane available.

And there you have it! Just remember that even when you set your app permissions the way you like them, the wording can still be vague about what they’ll do with the info they collect. The safest way to keep an app you don’t trust from accessing things it shouldn’t will always be to not download it in the first place.

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The Air Force Is Already Betting on SpaceX’s Brand-New Falcon Heavy

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Falcon Heavy is about to take off in a big way. Just a few months after its thrilling debut, SpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket is back in the headlines. Not for sending another cherry-red Tesla into space, but for gaining some major accolades from the Air Force.

In a surprising move, and after just one flight, the Air Force announced it has certified Falcon Heavy for military launches and awarded the vehicle its first highly coveted launch contract: the AFSPC-52 mission. The contract is valued at $130 million—that’s the price of ferrying the Air Force Space Command-52 satellite to its intended orbit sometime in 2020.

SpaceX wasn’t the only launch provider hoping to snag this sought-after contract. The Air Force said in a press release that more than one launch provider put in a bid. Although United Launch Alliance was not named in the announcement, it is implied that SpaceX’s newly-debuted Falcon Heavy beat out the competition’s tried-and-true Delta IV Heavy—the only other heavy-lift vehicle certified by the Air Force.

“SpaceX is honored by the Air Force’s selection of Falcon Heavy to launch the competitively-awarded AFSPC-52 mission,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement released to the media last week. “On behalf of all of our employees, I want to thank the Air Force for certifying Falcon Heavy, awarding us this critically important mission, and for their trust and confidence in our company.”

But SpaceX hasn’t always had the Air Force’s full confidence. In 2015, the aerospace company petitioned the military branch to allow multiple launch providers the chance to compete for lucrative military contracts—contracts that, up until that point, ULA had a monopoly on.

Eventually the Air Force opened the bidding process to any provider that has met its certifications—which now includes just SpaceX and ULA. That process normally requires at least three successful flights for any given vehicle; Falcon 9 was approved in 2015. But the Falcon Heavy is a different matter.

After only one flight, the Air Force decided the heavy lifter had earned its seal of approval. It will still need to fly at least three times before AFSPC-52’s scheduled 2020 launch date to maintain the contract.

This makes the Falcon Heavy—essentially three strapped-together Falcon 9 rockets—a powerful new weapon in SpaceX’s arsenal. According to SpaceX’s stats, the Falcon Heavy can deliver 140,660 pounds of mass to low earth orbit and 58,860 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit. For comparison, United Launch Alliance says its Delta IV Heavy can haul 62,540 pounds to LEO and 30,440 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit.

The increased capacity comes with another perk: a lower price. The $130 million associated with this mission is approximately one-third to one-half that of the Delta IV Heavy, which ULA CEO Tory Bruno says costs around $350 million.

SpaceX is also scooping up big bucks from the state of Florida—$14.5 million from Space Florida, the agency that manages the state’s aerospace economic development. The funds will help cover the aerospace company’s planned expansions, including a new rocket hangar, a launch-and-landing control center, and a rocket garden that could be used to display retired boosters.

The creation of a new 480,000-square-foot campus would enable SpaceX to store and refurbish large numbers of Falcon rocket boosters and nose cones near the launch pad—supporting its goal of rapid reusability. The company’s current digs include two launch pads, a launch control center nestled inside a small office complex right outside the Air Force station, and facilities at the port where drone ships return with recovered boosters. A hangar adjacent to launchpad 39A is capable of holding only three boosters.

But SpaceX expects that in the future it might have as many as 50 first-stage boosters. If that happens, it will need significantly larger facilities to process the boosters and any other part of the rocket SpaceX is able to reuse.

SpaceX will also need facilities to handle its planned Starlink satellite constellation. To date, the aerospace company has launched only two satellites of potentially thousands. The two experimental broadband satellites—dubbed TinTin A and B—launched in February, and SpaceX aims to start with 800 satellites as early as 2020 or 2021.

Don’t go dreaming of frolicking through SpaceX’s new rocket garden just yet. The proposed expansion still needs to pass Kennedy’s environmental review. But with SpaceX snagging new military contracts, it could take shape soon.

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‘Fire Flowers’ Dazzle in Gorgeous Photos of Japanese Fireworks

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Color fills up the night sky during the Aizu National Fireworks Competition in Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture.

Pyrotechnics fill the air during the Atami Ocean Fireworks Display in Atami City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Each year, local governments throw some 7,000 “fire flower” festivals, like the Tamamura Fireworks Display in Tamamura Town, Gunma Prefecture.

Pyrotechnical displays—like the Tamamura Fireworks Display in Tamamura Town, Gunma Prefecture—date back to the Edo period.

In Japan, fireworks are called hanabi, meaning “fire flower.” This bunch of fireworks at the Tsuchiura National Fireworks Competition in Tsuchiura City, Ibaraki Prefecture, look like a bouquet.

Tsuchiura National Fireworks Competition, Tsuchiura City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Oarai Ocean Fireworks Display, Oarai Town, Ibaraki Prefecture

Joso Fireworks Display, Joso City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Aizu National Fireworks Competition, Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture

Hitachi Sand Art Festival, Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Akagawa Fireworks Display, Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture

Koga Fireworks Display, Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Koga Fireworks Display, Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Koga Fireworks Display, Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture

Yokohana Port Opening Festival, Yokohana City, Kanagawa Prefecture

Tsuchiura National Fireworks Competition, Tsuchiura City, Ibaraki Prefecture

HTC U12 Plus Review: No Buttons, Mo Problems

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One day, smartphones will be reduced to their simplest, most elemental form: a single slab of glass. That’s what shows like Black Mirror, The Expanse, and even (yes) Parks & Recreation like to tell us. I’ve always thought that future was a ways off, but HTC is apparently ready to get the ball rolling.

HTC’s new U12 Plus (styled U12+ by HTC themselves) has completely eliminated physical buttons. It has spots on its sides that resemble volume and power buttons, but they’re really just pressure-sensitive bumps that make a clicky vibration when you push ‘em. If the lack of buttons sounds strange, you should know that HTC made the sides of its phone pressure sensitive, too. You can squeeze it to open apps or perform actions like zooming on a map.

It’s fun to see a phone maker experiment with new concepts, and it’s hard not to root for HTC, one of the smartphone pioneers. But, sometimes change for the sake of change turns ugly—this time, the price of said change was my sanity.

Under Pressure

The U12 Plus never behaves. It’s tricksy like those hobbitses—always up to something. Sometimes the screen shuts off when I pick it up, or the camera app springs to life on its own. Other times I’ll successfully unlock it and accidentally shut the screen off again.

It gets up to the most mischief when it’s in my pocket. Without fail, if I’m walking around it will somehow unlock itself and start doing something nefarious. I’ve gotten used to feeling that annoying vibration, telling me that I need to turn my phone’s screen off again. For a while I had convinced myself that it has changed its ways. What I didn’t realize was that the phone had yet again gone rogue, slipping into its silent mode.

After a week, I shut off the touch-able edges (called Edge Sense) altogether, which hasn’t alleviated the problem. It’s just not particularly fun to use fake buttons—in use they’re overly sensitive when you don’t want them to be, and infuriatingly difficult to press when they shouldn’t be. Ratcheting up the volume is also slower, and more of a chore. Sometimes it takes more pressure than it should, but mostly it’s just so silly to have to have to think about how I’m pressing the volume buttons on my phone.

The Show Must Go On

I’ve grown to accept (but dislike) those touchy buttons, and if you pretend they aren’t there, the U12 Plus is a good Android phone.

My U12 Plus had a black metal frame and translucent blue finish on the back, which lets you peek through parts of the glass. It’s gorgeous, but not particularly durable. Since it’s covered in Gorilla Glass 3 (not 5), it’s a little less tough than some newer phones—not that any of them are particularly crack resistant under the right conditions. To its credit, HTC included a cheap, but usable plastic case in the box. The case wasn’t my favorite, but I do recommend keeping it on.

The one time I took the case off, it slipped off a counter within minutes. It survived, but picked up a noticeable nick on its edge, which hurts my gadget-caring soul just a little every time it catches my eye.

HTC’s 6-inch 2,880 x 1,440 pixel Super LCD screen is notchless and beautiful, like always, though it does run a little dim by default. What you see on the screen is mostly Google’s new Android 8 Oreo operating system, though HTC still included some of its customary visual touches and apps. It’s mostly harmless stuff, but HTC’s apps aren’t particularly pretty to look at, and some are overly aggressive about demanding privileges. It’s also odd that I can’t make the grid of homescreen icons more dense on such a big screen, and the interface seems to hiccup whenever I open the app drawer, which hasn’t regularly happened on an expensive phone for a few years now.

The hiccup is especially worrying because this is a very powerful phone—about as fast as any Android phone out there in our benchmark tests, including the Samsung Galaxy S9. It runs on the prized new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and packs 6 GB of RAM and 64GB of file storage (with a MicroSD slot if you need more).

Battery life is only so-so. It always lasted until midnight at least, but many days, my battery meter dropped below 20 percent by the evening. One late night it did die on me. Some phones can regularly stretch their juice to a full day and a half. The HTC U12 isn’t one of them, and that’s disappointing.

Crazy Little Thing Called Bokeh

All four of the cameras work well. Unlike a lot of competitors, HTC decided to put two 8-megapixel selfie cams on the U12 Plus, along with dueling 12-megapixel and 16-megapixel rear cameras. The rear camera has optical image stabilization and uses its extra cam to perform a 2x optical zooming and nice portrait shots with an artificially blurred background.

The phone can take some beautiful shots. Photos snap incredibly quickly thanks to its fast f/1.75 aperture and responsive camera software. It had a little trouble with some macro shots of flowers, but even on a cloudy day, many of my outdoor shots looked lovely. Some low light selfies also turned out better than I expected.

Jeffrey Van Camp
Jeffrey Van Camp

The Auto HDR contrast enhancement was a little more hit or miss. I ended up turning it off because it added too much contrast, darkening areas of a photo more than needed. But while shooting the setting sun over a pond, HDR effectively blacked out the grass. It may have looked stylish, but it wasn’t accurate. HTC’s camera does enhance color and will add funny effects, smooth your wrinkles, or help your face lose a few pounds if you’re having that kind of day. I prefer reality. Luckily, HTC lets you choose.

The fake bokeh portrait effect isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough you might use it in real life. On the other hand, the selfie portrait mode felt a little less refined and seemed to kind of blur the edges of my head more than, well it just shouldn’t blur my head at all. But it’s still works better than many other high-end phones.

Another One Bites the Dust

You can buy the HTC U12 Plus unlocked for $800 ($850 for 128GB), and it will work on every major wireless network except Sprint. It’s as powerful as any 2018 phone, and comes with a great camera, case, waterproof build, and some solid earbuds.

But for every positive, there’s a negative. It has no audio jack, HTC’s included software is either ‘meh’ or outright annoying, and the battery life is behind the pack, not nearly as long as the OnePlus 6 or Galaxy S9.

And then there are the touch buttons. You can get used to having no volume or power buttons, but if you’re like me, it’s a sacrifice that will routinely annoy you. The lack of actual buttons made it difficult (sometimes impossible) to even take a screenshot, something you usually do by holding Volume Down + Power.

As much as I like aspects of the U12, I just can’t recommend a modern phone that falls flat on its face when you’re trying to crank up the volume on a podcast. Minimalism for the sake of it, no matter if it’s in the pursuit of futuristic design, has badly harmed the poor HTC U12 Plus.

A Fourth of July Drone Show Helps Military Families With Special Needs

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Last year, Brianna Santos and her family didn’t leave home for the Fourth of July. Stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, Santos and her husband, a senior airman with the 60th Civil Engineer Squadron, have seven children, five of whom have specialized medical needs. Her youngest daughter has a tracheostomy tube. Getting into a nearby town for a fireworks show was logistically overwhelming; even if they’d made it, the sounds and lights were overwhelming to some of her older kids.

The Santoses are just one of 1,000 families stationed at Travis who participate the Exceptional Family Member Program, which offers additional support for active personnel who have dependents who require ongoing medical care, be it physical or psychological. This year, they’ll celebrate Independence Day on base, thanks in part to a drone-powered light show that promises all the spectacle of a traditional fireworks display but far fewer complications.

Video by Intel

“Having it here on base, it really reduces that stress,” Santos says. “Just being somewhere familiar.”

You might remember the Intel Shooting Star drones from the Pyeongchang Olympics Opening Ceremony in February and Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show in 2017. On Wednesday night, 500 of the foot-long, 8-ounce quadcopters will ascend over an open field near the edge of Travis Air Force Base (weather permitting—winds have been picking up this week), dodging and zipping though a preprogrammed show that includes simulated fireworks, sure, but also custom-crafted imagery, like a pixelated homage to the KC-10 and C-17 aircraft that call Travis home. [Update: The July 4 drone show was canceled due to 30 mph winds, and rescheduled for July 5.]

Putting It Together

A number of factors make traditional fireworks impractical for the base, home to 10,000 active duty personnel and their family members, who bring the total population to 26,000. There’s the climate, first of all; fires start too easily in Northern California to send sparks flying with confidence. And then there’s the high concentration of EFMP members, for many of whom a fireworks show is untenable. Last year, rather than host a Fourth of July event, the base directed people to celebrations in nearby towns.

In early May this year, though, leaders at Travis had a thought that quickly turned into a revelation. The base has an existing relationship with Intel through its “grassroots innovation” program called Phoenix Spark. Having seen Intel’s glossy drone productions in the past, they wondered if there might be an opportunity to do the same for Travis. The timing felt right: This year also marks the base’s 75th anniversary.

That may seem like a short timeline in which to organize an original drone display, but the Shooting Star system allows for quick work. An animator choreographs a routine using 3-D design software, and each drone gets mapped onto an individual pixel. That also allows for a lot more flexibility than a traditional fireworks display might; imagination becomes the main limiting factor.

“A light show is a lot more than digitized fireworks. Fireworks have certain shapes and categorizations that come with what you can visualize with fireworks,” says Anil Nanduri, general manager of Intel’s drone group. “You can do all that visualization with drones, as well, but a lot more. You can put letters, you can put logos and animations. You can put stories in the sky.”

Intel

That flexibility means that while Wednesday’s show will be the first Intel drone light show to sub in for traditional Fourth of July fireworks, it won’t be a one-to-one replacement. It adds those planes, as well as an American flag, a hashtag with special significance to the base, and a few other custom touches, all by special request.

“We gave them a series of images that we were hoping to incorporate into the show,” says Captain Lyndsey Horn, chief of public affairs for the 60th Air Mobility Wing. “We basically provided those images, and they created the show around that.”

The most important difference from traditional fireworks, though, will be its inclusiveness. Drones may not pack quite the same visceral wallop as literal explosions in the sky, but they’ll help the Santos family and many others at Travis celebrate the Fourth in a way they haven’t been able to for years.

Lights, Action

Travis provides a compelling backdrop for a drone light show, but quadcopters aren’t likely to displace traditional fireworks displays anytime soon. While Nanduri notes that a Shooting Star show has more customization options and less of an environmental impact than pointing colorful boom-rockets toward the heavens, the drones come with some caveats.

There’s the wind, first of all; anything greater than 18 miles per hour or so will scuttle the flight. Current battery technology also allows for maximum duration of only about 20 minutes. Most shows come in well under that, between four and seven minutes a pop. That may feel slight next to the sustained quake of a fireworks display. And then there’s the cost: Nanduri says an individual Shooting Star drone show can run up a six-figure tab. (Intel will provide the Travis display free of charge.)

That said, Intel’s swarm has started making appearances apart from the globally significant sporting events where they first gained notice. They showed up at Pride Week in San Francisco in June and at Coachella before that. And like any new technology, each iteration helps expand capabilities and drive down cost.

“With drones, they’re reusable. You have to look at the economics of it as value creation. They’re not just about doing a one-off fireworks display; you can do a lot more with it,” Nanduri says. “The economics work based on reuse of the platform.”

Long-term prospects aside, though, Wednesday’s drone light show at Travis Air Force Base highlights a benefit that has no dollar sign attached.

“There’s lots of families with kids on base, mine included, where you can’t take them to your typical fireworks show, because the sounds and the lights of the show can be very overwhelming,” Santos says. “We really appreciate that they have this.”

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4th of July Tech Sales (2018): Osprey, Nest, iPad, V-Moda

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To be honest, the Fourth of July is not the first, or even the fifth or sixth, retail holiday on our calendars. It’s a day for grilling and lighting things on fire, not buying them. And a lot of people—both customers and retailers—are saving up their big guns for Amazon Prime Day, our real national summer shopping holiday.

Nevertheless, it’s still possible to save a couple bucks, especially if you’re shopping for travel and outdoor gear for your summer vacaciones. In our opinion, the best deal of all is a year’s subscription to WIRED for $5, which still comes with a free Yubikey. But we’ve rounded up a few others for you to look at on National Fireworks Day.

OUTDOOR GEAR

HOME GOODS

COMPUTER SALES

MOBILE AND WEARABLE

AUDIO

TV AND STREAMING DEVICE SALES

GAMING AND MOVIE SALES

FOURTH OF JULY SALE PAGES

Want to do your own shopping? Peruse the retailers yourself!

When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works.

How to Take Photos of Fireworks With a Smartphone or a Camera

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A thrilling fireworks display can confuse a modern camera’s automated settings. The explosions are fast, dynamic, and bright, and they disappear just as quickly as they appear. But by tweaking a few manual settings on whatever camera you’re using, you can take advantage of some battle-tested methods for capturing dramatic photos of those explosions in the sky. Even if you’re using a smartphone, there are a few apps and quick tips that will help you nab the best shots.

Scout Your Location

If you can visit the location of the fireworks show ahead of time, it’ll help you gauge the best angles for your photos. You obviously want a clear shot of the sky, and a nice wide-angle view of the skyline should do wonders for your shot composition.

But you won’t be able to predict the crowds, so make sure you scout out a couple of backup, super-secret locations too. There’s another thing you won’t be able to predict ahead of time: The wind. If it’s blowing towards you from the direction of the fireworks, you may end up with increasingly murky photos as the show goes on. If that’s the case, try to get as many good shots early on as possible. If the wind’s at your back, you’ll have great shooting conditions during the whole display.

The early part of the display is crucial: It’ll let you frame the entire show and take a few test shots to make sure your settings are producing the look you like. Plus, the early part of the show is the best time to get any wide-angle shots. Once the sky starts filling up with smoke, you can still get some good shots if you use a tighter zoom that features less of the smoke-filled skyline.

Prep Your Smartphone

You can certainly get great shots of fireworks with a smartphone, but the rules of engagement are a bit different than they are with a full-on camera. You won’t have a zoom lens or deep manual controls at your disposal, and because phones don’t come with standard tripod mounts, you’ll need a special case or a special tripod to keep it steady.

Here are the basics.

  • Turn off the flash. The fireworks will be hundreds of feet away, so you won’t need it.

  • Learn how to manually adjust your camera’s settings—or get an app that lets you do it.

  • Practice. Test your setup by taking pictures of a sparkler in a dark room.

  • Use a tripod for the best results

  • Get as close to the action as possible.

When shooting with your phone, you’re going to want to be even closer to the action than you would with any other kind of camera. Because your phone doesn’t come with an optical zoom lens, getting closer helps you fill the as much of the frame as possible with fireworks. There’s another good reason to get close: Your smartphone’s auto-exposure settings will probably boost the ISO if you’re composing a shot of faraway fireworks against a dark sky. This may lead to noisy photos with inaccurate colors. Post up as close to the fireworks as you possibly can. Find the barricades and plant yourself against them. Even better, use rooftops creatively, sneak onto the fireworks barge as a stowaway—anything to get really close to the action and force your smartphone to expose the shot for the fireworks themselves.

I know what you’re thinking: Why not just use digital zoom, which lets you stand wherever you’d like? That one’s easy: Because the results are terrible. Digital zoom just crops and enlarges the photo, making your photo look fuzzy and dull. Zooming in too far makes your decent-looking 12-megapixel still look like a grainy and embarrassing 3-megapixel disaster.

Richard/Flickr

For those manual camera settings, there are many variables you’ll have to navigate to find the right settings. But as a starting point, slow the shutter speed way down. Begin with leaving the shutter open for one or two seconds, then go longer if needed. This technique will capture light trails as the fireworks fall to earth post-explosion, and it will help illuminate more of the scene, like the skyline or the crowd of spectators. Fireworks photos are much better if they show more than just the fireworks. In long-exposure shots, you’ll need a tripod—or at least an unmoving surface you can use to prop up your phone—to avoid blur. You can still get great shots of fireworks with faster shutter speeds (and you won’t need a tripod). The key is to experiment and shoot as many photos as it takes to find the right mix of settings.

Apps and Accessories

Some devices (like, for instance, LG’s G7 and the OnePlus 6) include a comprehensive camera app that gives you manual control of the shutter speed and other parameters. If your phone doesn’t have settings you can tweak, there are plenty of options. On Android, try Camera FV-5 or Open Camera. Both of those apps will let you set your shutter speed and control your ISO settings. Got an iPhone? Manual and Halide are both great picks that give you more control.

Nothing beats a tripod when it comes to keeping your phone or camera stable. Manfrotto makes excellent aluminum tripods. Prefer to travel light? You can get something like a Joby GorillaPod. Don’t forget to grab a dedicated phone mount whether you’re buying your first tripod or using one you already own.

Shoot a 4K Video Instead

If your phone can capture high-resolution 4K/30p video, try that instead. You’ll be able to relax during the show and enjoy the spectacle while your phone captures footage. Later on, it’s easy to grab single, 8-megapixel frames that are more than good enough to post to Facebook or Instagram. Why stop at stills? Make a GIF! Or, edit the video down to just the highlights.

DSLRs, Mirrorless, and Cameras With Manual Controls

Most modern cameras have a “Fireworks” scene mode that optimize all the in-camera settings for you: It slows the shutter speed down, sets the focus to infinity, stops down the aperture, uses a low ISO setting, and prompts you to put the camera on a tripod. If you’re cool with letting the camera do all the work, go for it.

If you’d rather put a personal touch on your fireworks photos, here are the basics for any camera with manual controls.

  • Use a tripod.

  • Turn off the flash.

  • If you use slow shutter speeds, use a narrower aperture. (f/8.0 to f/16).

  • If you use faster shutter speeds, use a wider aperture.

  • Keep your ISO as low as possible. It keeps the colors accurate and the sky looking black and noise-free.

  • Consider shooting RAW instead of JPEG

Beyond those guidelines, here’s some additional advice.

Turn Off Autofocus. You won’t be adjusting your focus from shot to shot in this scenario, so flip your camera to manual focus and set that focus to infinity. It should keep the entire show in focus.

Turn Off Image Stabilization. Disable the camera’s image-stabilization system if you’re using a tripod. This may seem counterintuitive, but some stabilization systems actually introduce shake if there isn’t any, and some of them also boost the ISO or use a faster shutter speed to snap a crisper shot.

Slow Your Shutter. The general rule of thumb for fireworks is that if you use a slow shutter speed, you’ll get more-dramatic photos—start by leaving the shutter open for 4 or 5 seconds, then experiment from there. The slower your shutter speed, the narrower you’ll want your aperture to be. You also may want to use exposure compensation downward with slower shutter speeds.

Nail the Timing. You may want to press the shutter button just as you see shells launch into the sky so that your long-exposure shot depicts the light trails from that upward journey as well as the full drama of the explosion. If your camera has it, you should use “bulb mode” to get the greatest control over your shots. In bulb mode, the camera takes a shot for as long as you press the shutter button, so you can start the exposure exactly when you want and end it just as precisely.

Try Video. Have a lousy sense of timing? Consider shooting a video of the fireworks instead! If you have the ability to capture 4K video with your camera, you can keep rolling for the entire show. Not only will you get a video of the event, you’ll also be able to pull 8-megapixel photos to print or post online—all without missing a moment.

Get a Tripod. Unless you want to get really creative and light-painty, a camera-stabilizing tripod is a must-have. Any movement of the camera will make the light trails and other objects in the scene look like blurs, but this feature can also be used to great creative effect. If you’d rather keep your images looking tack-sharp, use a tripod and a remote-control app or shutter-release cable. Many modern cameras have sidecar mobile apps that let you take control of the camera without touching it. This is especially handy for fireworks photos, because you can unwittingly move the camera slightly every time you physically touch its shutter button or controls.

Shoot RAW. If you like to edit and process your photos before sharing them, try shooting in RAW. Using this file format, which most higher-end cameras support, gives you more options for correcting color and exposure, and can bring out nuances that aren’t visible when shooting in JPEG mode.

This post was updated on 7/3/2017. It was originally published on 7/3/2014 by Tim Moynihan.

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