06/25/2014
4th of July is coming soon, here are a few good tips on taking good pictures of fireworks!
1. Bring a tripod, bring a tripod, bring a tripod.
Good fireworks photos require long exposures, and the best way to get them is to use a sturdy tripod. If you absolutely can’t bring a tripod to the scene, do your best to brace your camera against railings, walls, or cars to keep it steady.
2. Bring a flashlight, charged batteries, and plenty of empty memory cards
You’re gonna need to change your camera settings while you’re out there, and it’s gonna be dark. Bring a small flashlight. And since you’ll likely be taking lots of pictures as you experiment, don’t forget to empty out your memory cards and bring a fully charged battery, too.
3. Turn your flash off
Whether it’s an on-camera flash or an add-on, it’s not nearly powerful enough to reach the fireworks. Even if it was, you wouldn't want to light them that way. Go flash-less.
4. Drop your ISO to 50 or 100
Your digital camera has several user-selectable light-sensitivity settings. The higher your ISO, the more sensitive your camera is to light. Normally this means you want to use a higher ISO in dark settings, but when you’re shooting longer exposures (long shutter speeds) high ISO can introduce a lot of digital noise to your photograph. An ISO setting of 100 is a good bet.
5. Use your camera’s fireworks setting
Many recent cameras have a scene mode specifically for fireworks. Try some photos with and without it and see what you prefer.
6. Use long shutter speeds: 2-3 seconds or longer
This is the most important camera setting you’ll need to worry about. At any given moment, fireworks are just a bunch of bright points of light. What makes them interesting is how their quick motion across the night sky illuminates a path and creates beautiful streaks and patterns. Your eye sees it, but with a fast shutter speed, your camera doesn't.
So to give your camera a chance to record those streaks and patterns, you need to make sure your shutter is open long enough to get them in. That means at minimum a full second, and possibly up to 15 seconds or more. You’ll want to experiment with different duration's to see what works best.
HAVE FUN AND HOPE THIS HELPS !
