Quick- any tips for taking photos of fireworks?

[Renard]

Got a new (to me) digi SLR but haven't had a chance to read the manual yet. Going out for the local fireworks display in a few minutes. Any ideas on how to capture a decent photo? Cancel flash? Multishot? Shutter speeds?

 

[gaz]

you will need to play with the shutter speed and the sensitivity. depending on the camera this will change.
Fireworks are always tricky, as you will no doubt get some noise due to the general way to take them is a short shutter speed with a high sensitivity which gives you noise. If you have a tri-pod then swap that round and you can get some funky photos.

Whats also cool when taking a long shutter speed shot on a tri-pod of something bright is zooming in or out during the shot. This can give a nice effect but it takes time to get right and generally only works on stationary lights.

 

[GrasB]

Use a wide lens & frame your target area wide. The aperture wants to be almost fully open (obviously if your lens is OOF at F2 drop to F2.8). I find the best way is to have a longish exposure (around 0.5s) so you get a trail. You may want to turn noise reduction off, this is camera dependent.

 

[Renard]

Thanks

 

[jimboalee]

Video them.

There's nowt so boring as sitting in front of a slideshow of fireworks.

I go to the Stanford Hall Fireworks champs ( in August ffs ). Take an hour's video and put it on a DVD RW.

All the noise, all the gasps, OOOh's and AAAAh's of the crowd.

Video projector. Can't beat it.

 

[amnesia]

Try and get some silhouette of the crowd / trees etc in the shot to give perspective.

A tripod is a must IMHO.

 

[johnnyh]

two of mine

 

[johnnyh]

Try and get some silhouette of the crowd / trees etc in the shot to give perspective.

A tripod is a must IMHO.

I handhold for fireworks, they go off in random directions and so need to move to track the things.

 

[Renard]

Ended up just taking the pocket camera with me. A bit shaky and nothing as good as Johnny's. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

 

[Crankarm]

two of mine

No way these two shots are hand held they are far too sharp! You must have had a tripod......

 

[johnnyh]

hahaha how the hell would I track rockets with a tripod??? I'd need to know the flight path and explosion height - impossible.

taken with a Canon 30D and a 70-200L f4.0, handheld, if you want I'll look out exposure details from the original files, but I am guessing the exposure would be something like ISO 200/400, f4 and 1/250s

I usually take sports photos, and again you track and shoot.

Also you are working with short exposures, it really aint that hard to get them sharp if you sort your exposure.

 

[summerdays]

Good photos especially the 1st one ... I've never had one like that...

I do the hand held too - takes loads, I get lots of duff shots but usually a couple of nice ones.

 

[Norm]

hahaha how the hell would I track rockets with a tripod??? I'd need to know the flight path and explosion height - impossible.

Unless you have a tripod with a fluid head.

taken with a Canon 30D and a 70-200L f4.0, handheld, if you want I'll look out exposure details from the original files, but I am guessing the exposure would be something like ISO 200/400, f4 and 1/250s

I'd be surprised if you could get trails like that from a 1/250 shutter speed. I'd guess something over a second.

 

[Crankarm]

You could have used a wider angle lens capturing the general area with camera on a tripod with a light trigger to fire the shutter as with lightning shots. Once you got the firework in the frame then put the image into Photoshop for cropping, zooming into it and image sharpening. I would have thought you'd need a slow shutter speed otherwsie you would not see the light trails just a point light source before the trails have commenced. That's my 2ps worth.

 

[summerdays]

Problem with taking a wide angle shot and cropping is that the size of image you would be left with would be very small - OK for on-line but not for printing.

Fireworks move quite fast ... I will check my photos later but I'm getting ready to go to work soon (shouldn't really be on here).