How to Take Photographs of Fireworks

With the 4th of July right around the corner, most Americans will be viewing a fireworks show somewhere.  Last year was the first year I had an SLR camera (Nikon D40x - which I love btw) so it was the first time I could really take pictures of the fireworks.  It was a great learning experience for me.  I read some articles before I went out to get some ideas, but it really just came down to trial and error.  Let me share some tips with you that might make your first time with a digital SLR a little easier.

1. First things first: you MUST have a tripod. Without one you will not be able to leave the shutter open long enough to capture the fireworks



2. Find an unobstructed spot. This means you probably want to get there a little earlier than normal so you don’t have any buildings, trees, lights, etc. between you and the sky where the fireworks will be shot off.



3. Get your Camera Settings right.  This is the part that is the toughest.  There’s really no standard settings that will work for all situations.  Put the camera on manual mode - Aperture or Shutter Speed Priority won’t work since you’ll start by looking at a black sky and it won’t compensate for the bright fireworks.  I set my aperture to f14 - this allowed me to leave the shutter open long enough to capture the motion of the fireworks without overexposing it.  I used the Bulb mode for my shutter speed.  Bulb mode basically means the shutter stays open as long as you’re holding down the button.  I found this gave me the ability to expose each firework differently without having to constantly change settings.  I tried all kinds of exposure lengths, but found that my best ones came out between 1.5 and 3 seconds.  I also used an ISO setting of 800, but this year I might try a lower setting to avoid some of the graininess in the pictures.  This means I’ll need to widen my aperture (lower f number) and/or lengthen my exposure time (although I’ll probably just change the aperture, I liked the results from the exposure time I used last year).



4. Use a trigger cable.  I didn’t have one, but if you do, use it.  This will help eliminate camera shake on the longer exposures.



5. Get your timing right. I generally found that pressing the trigger right after the bright bang of the fireworks exploding and holding for 1.5-3s got some of my best results.  You can also try starting the shot as the fireworks shoot up so you catch the tail (like the example in my photoblog below).

That’s about it.  I played around a little with the focal length but usually left it at my widest angle (18mm) since I figured I could always go back and crop out white space (or in this case black space) but I would be upset if I missed part of a blast.

One of my favorite shots is on my photoblog and I have some the others that turned out well on Flickr.  I’d love to see all of your fireworks pictures, so please leave comments with links to your images that you already have or take during the 4th of July festivities this year!  If you have other tips, I’d love to hear them, too.

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Update: (7/2/08): Saw a similar post on Lifehacker…check it out!