How to shoot Fireworks?

Peter-B

Peter-B

Peter-B

Associate
Joined
26 Feb 2006
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247
I went to the Thames festival on Sunday, my 1st attempt to shoot fireworks.
As I’ve only been photographing for a month, it was pure guess work..
The booklet provided was of little use, my lack of understanding photographic terms doesn’t help either!

Nikon D60 with 18-55mm VR kit lens

Hand held, I set the camera on auto, minus flash. & continues shutter release.

I could only shoot when there was a good flash-bang as the camera sensor refused to
open the shutter or there was a slight delay on pressing the shutter and it opening.

I shot 348 of which 2 are reasonable (by my novice standard).
The best 2 had an Exposure of F3.5 1/20s Metering mode Matrix, ISO 1600.


My question is how should this be done, given my limited hardware & knowledge.


It has to be said I experienced a “rush” when shooting and it wasn’t diminished when I realized I only had 2 good shots!, roll on November 5th . This could be better than sex! :eek:
 
you HAVE to use a tripod....

you cannot use auto, you have to set it to manual

you use very long exposures ie 5 - 10 seconds with a cable release

and then its all about timing and experimenting.
 
Paulus said:
you HAVE to use a tripod....

you cannot use auto, you have to set it to manual

you use very long exposures ie 5 - 10 seconds with a cable release

and then its all about timing and experimenting.
Click to expand...

Normally for night shots a cable isn't needed but for fireworks it’s a great benefit as you need to time the start of the shot just right.

You’ll get the rest of it with some practice though, won’t be too difficult after long 

Here’s one I did a while back:




ph_fireworksview.jpg
 
I'd say 5-10secs is a bit long. But it depends on how much is going on and what effect you're after. These are my incredibly rough handheld shots from the Thames festival.

Couldn't be bothered to cycle down with tripod so all handheld at ISO200 and 1-2seconds. On a Canon G9.

Facebook album
 
Paulus said:
you HAVE to use a tripod....

you cannot use auto, you have to set it to manual

you use very long exposures ie 5 - 10 seconds with a cable release

and then its all about timing and experimenting.
Click to expand...
Yup, sound advice that. Personally I tend to go for 2 - 4 second exposures but that's mainly because I find any longer gives a "busier" shot than I'd like (although you are very much at the mercy of whoever is letting the fireworks off).

Focus is important - manual focus is essential otherwise the camera will try and focus on something and generally get it all wrong. Look at using hyperfocal distances rather than trying to focus on the fireworks themselves.
 
Get a tripod and stick it on bulb with a low ISO. Pre-focus the lens and get a nice large depth of field with something like f/11. Use either the shutter button or preferably a remote release and hold down the shutter for the length of time you're after to capture a single one or a number. If you want to try and go for a landscape with loads of fireworks appearing to go off at the same time, then you can cover the lens with a piece of black card in between fireworks to prevent overexposure of the scene.
 
Many thanks AtlanticP, very good article, I even understand some of it!

All of the Pro's shooting that night, had tripods, so I kinda guessed I was doing it wrong.

I have a problem with setting to manual.

I tried yesterday to get a shot of the moon.

Followed instruction in booklet for setting up "bulb" , outside on a tripod + electronic remote, and nothing happened! shutter would not open "to dark"

Took the whole setup indoors and it worked, shutter opened, left it for 30 sec and closed.

I havent figured out how to set the camera to open when its to dark, I have googled but nothing specific for Nikon. any ideas

Nice one mrk, about 100 times better than my best!
 
Peter-B said:
Followed instruction in booklet for setting up "bulb" , outside on a tripod + electronic remote, and nothing happened! shutter would not open "to dark"

Took the whole setup indoors and it worked, shutter opened, left it for 30 sec and closed.

I havent figured out how to set the camera to open when its to dark, I have googled but nothing specific for Nikon. any ideas
Click to expand...

Use manual focus.
 
it might be because you're still using auto-focus and not manual.

at night your camera will really struggle to focus on anything so manual is a must.

I'm looking forward to giving this a go in November too. :)

Edit; Damm you all posted at the same time as me. I'm just not fast enough!! ;)
 
Yes I'm using auto-focus.

Dread, :mad: I've goto go into menu and change things.

This is where it all goes wrong, still I've got the reset button!

Thanks again everybody. :D
 
There is a switch on the left hand side of your lens that will change it to manual focus. It will be on AF at the moment, just flick it to MF, and rotate the end of your lens to focus.
 
I found the biggest problem with fireworks was predicting where they were heading. I had a couple of nice shots that got ruined because they ended up off camera. I don't even RAW can recover it. :D
 
Pho said:
I found the biggest problem with fireworks was predicting where they were heading. I had a couple of nice shots that got ruined because they ended up off camera. I don't even RAW can recover it. :D
Click to expand...
I tend to shoot a lot wider than necessary precisely to avoid this. This shot is a crop of about 2Mp worth of an 8Mp image, a quick buzz through Genuine Fractals and it made a cracking 20"X30" poster for my wall.
 
rpstewart said:
I tend to shoot a lot wider than necessary precisely to avoid this. This shot is a crop of about 2Mp worth of an 8Mp image, a quick buzz through Genuine Fractals and it made a cracking 20"X30" poster for my wall.
Click to expand...


Good point, I never really thought about cropping them after. I was shooting with a 28mm lens (I'm not at home so can't check what length I was actually at) out my window from about 200 meters away and was still missing them :D.

I'll be more prepared this year :).
 
Wide is ok but zoomed in is also good, took me ages to get anything good zoomed in, I was lucky the display went on for about an hour. :p

Yep as already stated, tripod with remote release, manual focus, medium-small aperture (f/8-f/11 ish), ISO100 and 1-3 seconds exposure. Have a check every so often that the images are what you want and re-adjust the exposure time to compensate. :)

One of mine from last summer

main.php


More here.
 
OMG I am soooooooooo getting a tripod and wil be standing by the field viewing into the town centre and hopefully get a lot of nice shots.

Thanks for the idea man =]

problem light polution from the actully town centre?
 
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