With all the summer fairs and festivals, and the Fourth of July fast approaching, here are a few quick tips for getting good fireworks pictures.
First and foremost, you'll want to use a tripod. The slow shutter speeds necessary for fireworks photos are way too slow to handhold. Having a flashlight can be very helpful, since you're going to be working in the dark. Enough said.
If you're using a point and shoot camera, check to see if it has a fireworks setting in its preset modes. If it does, great! If not, try using the landscape mode. Both of these preset modes use a long focusing distance, and turn off the flash. The fireworks mode also turns down the ISO, one advantage over the landscape mode. If yours is one of the many which has some manual settings (but no fireworks mode), check to see if you can turn down the ISO yourself. Contrary to what you might expect, you want to use a low ISO, because, while the sky is dark, the actual subject of the photos, the fireworks, are very bright.
