Fireworks are one of those few things that are mesmerizing to watch, they have beautiful bright colors ,amazing patterns and they don't come around that often. This why we have to capture them.
Three years ago, I attempted to photograph the July 4th fireworks. It was my first time and I didn't had much idea of what I was doing, of course, the images didn't came out as I expected. I promised to get it right next time, three years went on with out me being unable to make it to a July 4 firework. This year I can make it and I want to give it another try.
This blog is for you to learn from my previous mistakes and also provide few tips that I've picked up which I think might be helpful this time around.
So let's get to it.
In this blog I'll assume you already have the knowledge of operating a dslr on manual mode, and if you don't, don't worry it will be easy to find out what I am talking about by just looking at your manual or a simple google search, maybe my next post will explain the manual mode in detail, but for now let's assume you have the knowledge.
Ok, so we have a dslr ready, doesn't matter what brand. First item is a Dslr.
The second equipment is a tripod, tripod is as important as the camera when it comes to photographing fireworks. Any stable Tripod will do it, if you don't have one, go to the big retail stores to buy cheap ones, target sells tripod for about 30$.
The third item, although not really necessary but very useful is a remote trigger. It is a remote that connects to your dslr so you can take photos by pressing the trigger instead of the shutter in your camera. This helps the photo to look more crisp since it will avoid those shaky looking shots that occur from our finger pressing on the trigger on the camera, therefore a remote helps us avoid that shake.
Another tips that aren't necessary equipment related are
1) Choosing your location: This is important as it is the first step in compositing your shot, find an intersting location with a city in the back, a water fall, whatever it is that can help the image be more dynamic. Which brings me to my second tip which is getting to your spot early
2) Trust me, you will NOT be the only photographer with a tripod on a good location to capture the fireworks. Most photographers arrive early, reserve their spot with their tripod and wait till the show starts. Arrive early and get the best spot. choose a level ground to avoid tilted photos. Also your best photos will be the first few ones, this was my mistake, you see, previous fireworks leave smoke in the air and that smoke will get in your next shot, if you are there early you will have a chance to capture the fireworks without smoke hovering above them.
Ok so now the mechanics.
i
A smoke on the left top corner.
once you've chose your spot, you've set your tripod and ready to go, you need to set your camera settings. Most fireworks are at night, let's assume there is nothing in the foreground and you only want to capture the fireworks. You will need to only expose for the fireworks, my go to settings is to first start with a small apture, start at f22, I usually set my ISO low first and build it up if needed. So 200Iso, should do it. Most cameras have a bulb mode, in this mode you can leave the camera as open as you want, which means more light will be absorbed by the sensor, most people like to use this setting although I don't recommend it since fireworks are bright enough and you will be risking overly exposed shots. So I advice to stick to manual mode, the trick is to play with your shutter speed, bring the shutter speed down, to seconds, maybe a minute, start with this setting
f22,
shuttter speed- 1 minute
ISO- 200
after the first shot review your image and decide weather or not you need to brighten it up or bring it down, if you need to brighten it up I always advise to increase the shutter speed, take it towards two minutes depending on how dark it is, if it needs to be darkened bring down the shutter speed towards 30 seconds.
And to avoid the shake that will be caused by us pressing the shutter button, one option is to use the remote, if remote is not accessible, using the self timer mode should work just fine. Most dslrs have that mode(check you dslr manual).
another important thing is focus, since it will be pitch black, unless you have a city in front you, your chance is to focus before it gets dark, autofocus won't help you, you need to change it to manual focus which is usually on the left side of your lens( af/mf). If you have a city in front you, you can focus on the city on autofocus and bring it back to manual after that and leave it that.
Last thing left is to have fun, this is a guide to photograph the fireworks the "proper" way, but you shouldn't be afraid to change the settings to your liking and do a little expirmenting.
Take the photos and share them on the comment section. I'll do a blog after the photo shoot with better photos.