Taking photographs of fireworks displays is quite easy and produces great looking photographs.
What You Will Need
You will need your camera and a tripod.
Setting Up
Of course, first find a great vantage point to view the fireworks. Then set the camera on the tripod and generally frame the scene that you will want to take. You will probably have to wait for the first fireworks to go off to determine the height of the fireworks, but you will probably have a good idea of what to expect, by how far back from the fireworks they keep the crowds.
Reducing The Blur
If you have a shutter release cable for your camera use it, otherwise, if your camera has a 2 second timer use that instead. This is to reduce any shaking of the camera which might be caused by your pressing the shutter release button. If you don’t have a cable release or your camera doesn’t have a 2 second timer, you could try the timer anyway, but that usually is 10 seconds, and that seems like a really long time while fireworks are popping overhead. Otherwise, you could be extremely gentle and try to coincide your hitting the shutter release with a a lull in the fireworks, so that any shake will subside by the time the next fireworks takes off. The final method will likely result in blurring of any background that is in the scene. If that is what you decide to resort to, try also taking pictures above any features on the ground, so that only the sky is captured, any blurred effect will greatly reduced on the night the sky.
Focus on infinity.
Aperture And Shutter Speed
You should be shooting in manual mode. Take a light reading with your camera, when there are fireworks in the air, this will tell you the proper exposure you must make for the fireworks. 1) Meter for the area where the fireworks are, without the fireworks. 2) Once first fireworks discharge, meter the fireworks, noting how many more stops the fireworks are than the dark. 3) adjust exposure for the fireworks.
Now, when adjusting for the fireworks, keep in mind what type of shot you want. Since you can compensate for shutter speed by adjusting the aperture and vice versa, you can control how the fireworks will look. The longer the shutter speed you take, the more fireworks you may capture in your image. If your shutter speed is too fast, than you will not capture even one fireworks discharge.
If you want to keep the shutter open for a long time, you should keep know that if fireworks repeatedly fire off in the same spot in your image that area will be overexposed, i.e., white.
I would recommend an exposure of ten seconds to start off with.
If the length of exposure is what you want, but the fireworks are not bright enough then open your aperture, or if the fireworks are too dark, close your aperture.
ISO
Since you are propping your camera on a tripod, even though it is dark outside, you can still shoot with your camera set to ISO 100.
Recommended Settings
The settings for shooting fireworks can vary greatly, subject to many variables, but a good starting point is to set your ISO to 100, shutter speed to around 5 seconds, and aperture to f/10. After your first shot, check your image and make sure you readjust as necessary. Check out the photos below, the settings are listed for each one.
Saturation and Contrast
Whether you are shooting with a digital SLR or digital point and shoot, most cameras will give you some control over the saturation. This is a good opportunity to boost the saturation one to two levels and bring out the colors in the scenery. If you use this setting, check quickly after each shot to see how it looks. If you overdo it the colors can start to look exaggerated, fake. Properly applied the vibrant colors against the black night sky can really give your images a dramatic look.
Another setting that can add a little drama to the scene is the contrast setting. Again, like saturation, many digital cameras today allow you to adjust the contrast in your photos in the camera. And again, like saturation, this feature can be overused so check your images after you make adjustments to the contrast. Turning up the contrast on your photo will make the dark sky even darker against the light from the fireworks.
Click here to see how to adjust the contrast on a digital point and shoot.
Keep Shooting
Taking photographs of fireworks, by its nature, is a random endeavor. You cannot predict what you will be taking a picture of, since the fireworks haven’t gone off by the time you hit the shutter release; you don’t know what fireworks you will capture, or where they will go off. Since that is the case it is important that you don’t stop shooting pictures, until the fireworks display is over; otherwise you might end up with some dark smoky shots.
Examples
The photo at the top of the article was taken at ISO 100, F/25 for 13 seconds.
This photo was taken at ISO 100, F/11 for 4 seconds.
This photo was the finale of the show. The settings were ISO 100, F/9 for 5 seconds.
The settings above can be used as a rough guide. The first photo was taken for 13 seconds, while the last two photos were for 4 and 5 seconds. However, the last photo represents more of what you should expect with longer exposure shots. Even though it was only for 5 seconds, it was the finale and they were shooting of a lot more fireworks simultaneously than previously. Thus, more fireworks were shot off in those 5 seconds than in the 13 seconds of the first photo at the top of the article. Notice that in the bottom photo, the larger amount of fireworks resulted in an overexposed center, i.e., although the fireworks were colored the center of the plume turned out all white. Also, not as many fireworks were discharged at the top of the scene, so the green and red explosions came out nicely exposed.
Finale
So, next time I am taking pictures of fireworks I have to remember to anticipate the finale and turn down the speed and open up the aperture. Maybe 2 seconds at F/6.3. Alternatively, I could try to capture the finale and the amount of fireworks by keeping it open for just as long and maybe just closing the aperture up to 1 f/stop to turn down the brilliance of the center.
