Photographing Fireworks

Photographing fireworks is challenging but not impossible. 

What you will need to take great photos.

Digital Camera –Firstly turn off the flash and set your camera to manual mode. This will allow you to control the exposure and aperture yourself. A good starting place for your camera settings would be ISO 100, f/11, at 1/2 second. If the photos are looking too dim, vary the shutter speed while keeping the aperture the same. If you have one of the more expensive point and shoot style digital cameras you may be able to set it to manual mode and fix your aperture and shutter speed. Have a play with its settings and give it a go, you may be surprised at what results you get. Alternatively the landscape mode may be really good as well as it fixes the focal length at infinity.

  Tripod – A tripod is very important when photographing fireworks to keep your camera sturdy. If you don’t have a tripod then use anything that enables you to hold it still, like a table or fence post. For a different effect you may want to hand hold your camera but I don’t encourage you to do it all the time.
For point and shoot camera users you might want to look into a take anywhere foldaway tripod.

  Cable release - or remote shutter release, to remotely fire your camera. With most digital cameras you can get a remote control to fire them wirelessly, completely detached from the unit. It is a good idea to use some style of remote release to improve the sharpness of your photos. If you don’t have any of these there is always the timer release function, you just have to be really good at anticipating the timing of the show.

Other settings you may want to use include longer exposure times as well as your cameras B or Bulb Mode.