Fireworks Photography Recap

Remember my fireworks photography checklist from the 4th of July?  It worked really well and I am happy with my fireworks photos.  In addition to my family, we were with a group of friends, two of whom are photographers also.  We had a competition where we asked our other friends to judge whose photos were best.  Unfortunately, I didn’t win, but I had a blast!

Here’s a recap of my checklist for getting good photographs on the 4th of July, with my comments on how they worked:

• Use a tripod – check.  This one is a necessity.
• Shutter speed – the longer, the better.  The shutter was open for 21 seconds in the photo above where you can see the city line at the bottom!
• Bulb Mode – I kept my camera in this mode the entire time.  I would depress the shutter button when I first saw the firework shooting up.  I held the button down until the firework started to dissipate.  This was great, because I didn’t have to estimate before hand how long to keep the shutter open.  I mean really, who could guess how long one firework would take anyway?
• Multiple fireworks in one exposure – I used the tip from this Digital Photography School article about holding black foam core board over the lens between fireworks while the shutter is open.  I used a black plastic plate instead of the board, and my friend used a hat.  This method produced that same image above with the cityscape.

This was tough because I wasn’t exactly sure when to remove the plate from the lens and when to replace it.  Definitely will take more practice.  It was also a challenge because the fireworks were bursting at approximately the same point in the sky.  Some of my images taken this way just look like a blob of fireworks on top of each other, whereas I was hoping for well defined bursts horizontally across the image.  I wonder if this would require moving the tripod just a tiny bit while the lens is covered.  Something to practice on next year….

• Multiple fireworks in one exposure, part II — one of my friends has a Nikon that will let you tell it to record, for instance, 5 shots on one exposure.  So, you press the shutter button 5 times to produce one image.  I need to research whether my camera does this.
• ISO – 200 all night long.  There is no noise in these pictures!
• Aperture? – I used f/10 in just about every picture to get good focus throughout the image while letting in enough light.
• Zoomed in shots – I had planned on zooming in really close on some of the fireworks to capture only part of the scene.  This was harder for me.  I wasn’t close enough, for one thing, and didn’t want to waste time putting on my zoom lens.  Maybe next year.

How did your pictures from the 4th turn out? Link to them in the comments to share them, if you’d like!

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