TIME FOR FIREWORKS PHOTOS!

By Sheila Pack

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.

If you're using a DSLR, you'll want to put it into manual focus, and focus at infinity (all the way out). Then, you'll want to put the camera in manual (M) mode, which allows you to take control of the shutter speed and the f-stop (aperture). You'll want to use the lowest ISO possible: 100 if your camera has that setting, or 200 if that's the lowest it goes. (The low ISO setting minimizes visible noise in your images.)

Here's where a little testing comes in. A good starting point is to set your aperture at f8, and your shutter speed at 8 seconds. Take your first picture, even without a burst, and see how the sky registers in your picture. If the sky looks too light, you can adjust accordingly. A good rule of thumb is to not use an aperture tighter than f16, because you'll start to lose sharpness (due to diffraction). Try adjusting one full fstop at a time, until you get the sky dark enough to allow the firework trails and bursts to show up well. If you get to f16, and your sky is still too bright, then adjust your shutter speed. Keep in mind that several seconds of the shutter being open will allow not only the burst, but the trail of light preceding it, to be recorded in your image. If you're close enough to where they're being set off, you may hear a 'whoosh' and that's your cue to press your shutter button. In all the excitement, remember to squeeze it, not poke it, so that you'll not cause movement of the camera. Some people like to use a remote for fireworks, but I've not found it to be necessary.

Lastly, while the 'grand finale' is wondrous to behold, it's often too 'busy' to photograph well. Several bursts can look great, but lots and lots of them just looks messy.

Have fun, and good luck with your fireworks photography!

Too much light in the sky... adjust your ISO lower to make the sky darker, which allows the fireworks to show up better

...better...

Too long a shutter speed, too many bursts...unless you like to see the  'smoke' 

Perfect!

About Sheila Pack

I've been shooting weddings since just out of high school, and enjoy it even more now than when I first started! Digital photography has changed the way we work in a very big way, and it's all good. My darkroom is now my computer, and being able to customize images for my clients is just SO GREAT! I've had one of my cameras converted to infrared-only photography, and my couples love the dreamy effect this has. Black and white is enjoying immense popularity again, and its classic timelessness is particularly beautiful for wedding images, in my opinion. I love ALL sorts of photography, and would love to travel out west again; Monument Valley is breathtakingly beautiful. I enjoy photographing wildlife and landscapes, too, but weddings definitely have a better market! I love coming up with new ideas, going to new locations, and striving to tailor each couple's photos to their distinct personalities... My daughter, Mandi, is also shooting weddings now; sometimes with me, and sometimes on her own.

www.sheilapack.com