The 4th of July is right around the corner. Families all over the United States will be celebrating America’s Independence from Great Britain in 1776 with picnics, barbeques and fireworks.
Last year, my family and I celebrated the 4th of July at Legoland in Carlsbad, California. And I had just purchased my Canon Rebel T1i DSLR camera and I couldn’t wait to capture the fireworks show at Legoland.
Well, not all of my photos turned out as well as I would have liked. Just goes to show its the photographer and not the camera that makes a good photograph. So I thought I would share what I’ve learned about photographing firework displays in hopes that you will learn from my mistakes.
In this photo, you can clearly see I was not using a tripod. See how blurry the tree is.
Obviously, this is going to be a low light situation, so if you can, use a tripod. Using a tripod during long exposures can help you avoid blurry pictures. There are two other ways to avoid shaking the camera while taking firework photos. In addition to your tripod, try using a remote release trigger or if you don’t have that, set your camera to the 2 second self timer mode.
Another important factor to consider while attempting to photograph firework displays is framing or composing your shots. If at all possible, find out where they will be fired from and then scope out a location that will give you an unobstructed view of the bursting in air. While at Legoland last year, not only did I have trees blocking my view, but I also got a few shots of the back of people’s heads. You will also want to pay attention to the direction of the wind. Capturing the smoke from the fireworks does not make for a good clean photograph.
Now on to some of the technical aspects of photographing fireworks. Such as focal length, aperture, shutter speed and ISO. I like to shoot just about everything at an ISO of 100 because it gives me less camera noise which is definitely present when you are shooting at night. As for focal length, I will definitely be going for as wide as possible so I don’t miss anything. I can always crop my photos during post processing for some spectacular close ups. You will want to set your camera’s aperture between f/8 to f/16. This will insure that objects near and far will be in focus.
Not only did I have the shutter open too long, I am getting a lot of the smoke into the picture.
When it comes to fireworks, you will want to have your camera’s shutter speed set correctly. Too fast and you won’t be able to capture the light trails as they fall to the ground. Too long of a shutter speed will give you an overexposed photograph. This year I am going to try some recommendations from Darren Rowse over at the Digital Photography School blog. Darren suggests setting your shutter speed to “Bulb” mode, which allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as you like. You will definitely need a remote release for this technique, which I do have. You will want to press and hold down the remote release just as the firework is about to explode and then release it once the firework has faded away.
And one last word of advice before I end this long winded blog post. Please turn off your camera’s flash. The people around you will thank you for this. Your on camera flash is only good for subjects that are between 10-16 feet in front of the camera. Your flash will be of no help in photographing fireworks.
Well I hope you have learned a few things from this blog post. Do you have any tips for photographing fireworks that I did not cover? Please share them in the comments.
How will you be celebrating this 4th of July?
