Advice needed: Fireworks

[THXGEEK]

It has been literally decades since I've attempted any fireworks pics... If I'm lucky, I'll be in a prime spot to capture the 4th of July display in Washington DC next week. If not lucky, I'll likely be watching the display in my local community...

So. What words of wisdom can you offer to capture wonderful pics? Which lens? Shutter speed? Exposure time? ISO?

Please lend me your wisdom!

TIA!

 

[Jan_K]

There are several approaches to this, but this is what I have done in the past to photograph some fireworks.

Camera on a tripod, aperture quite small f8-f11 like, ISO set to 100 and a shutterspeed of 10-20seconds, depending on surroundings.

With a long shutterspeed you can just wait for some of the fireworks and if there are multiple umbrellas, you catch multiple. Depending on the surroundings you may need to vary the exposure, not to blow out highlights (like street lights in the frame). The aperture, shutterspeed and ISO should give a dark exposure (assuming the fireworks will be when the sun has set). May vary the settings a bit to get a feel for the environment, like silhouettes of some buildings or landmarks.
The fireworks are a bit similar to flash, they are quite bright and of short duration. A shutterspeed >10s therefore does not lead to blown out highlights and the fireworks will be exposed properly (enough) independent of the shutterspeed the camera is set on. The longer you can get the shutter speed, the larger the chance to capture the fireworks (less exact timing involved).

The lens to use is depending on your position and desired framing. With long exposure, small aperture you don't need to use a fast lens. So it will be more about the angle of view you are after. I can't really advice on that, since that is dependent on you position relative to the fireworks and if you want any landmarks or the like to frame your shot. In general I would should a bit wider than you expect you want to be, so you can do some fine tuning by cropping. Better to crop in a bit than to have a tight frame cutting of part of the fireworks umbrella.

Furthermore I would definitely shoot RAW to have the most leeway in post processing to process highlights and shadows.

Next to that using a remote can be usefull or even set an interval, so the camera takes shots automatically. When you set an interval, pick your shutterspeed and experiment a bit with the actual interval (the camera needs to write the photo to the card, prior to taking a new one). This will depend on the camera used. If I set a 10s shutterspeed and a 10 s interval, the exposures stops after 10s, but due to writing the file the next exposure does not yet start, making it to wait till the next 10s interval. If I set the interval to 11s, then probably the next photo will be taken 1s after ending the previous exposure.

I've used a similar approach when photographing some fireworks from a mountain looking down towards a mountain lake.

Just my 2 cts.

 

[THXGEEK]

Thank you! I will do my best to take some awesome shots.

Question: Focus. Manual or auto? I'd think that with subject detection off, the camera 'should' (or is that 'might')? autofocus on the brightest object - namely the Rocket's Red Glare. Am I overthinking this?

The last time I shot fireworks was back in the late '70s (high school for me). Back then there was a process called Cibachrome where you'd take your color film to the shop so that they could provide you with the slides. Then you'd take the slides back to your home darkroom and expose/process your own prints (developer, stop bath & fixer) and Walla! You'd have a glorious 8x10 color print. No fancy-pants color printers back then.

(Wow, I feel old.... Where's my cane? And get the hell off my lawn!)

 

[Jan_K]

Thank you! I will do my best to take some awesome shots.

Question: Focus. Manual or auto? I'd think that with subject detection off, the camera 'should' (or is that 'might')? autofocus on the brightest object - namely the Rocket's Red Glare. Am I overthinking this?

The last time I shot fireworks was back in the late '70s (high school for me). Back then there was a process called Cibachrome where you'd take your color film to the shop so that they could provide you with the slides. Then you'd take the slides back to your home darkroom and expose/process your own prints (developer, stop bath & fixer) and Walla! You'd have a glorious 8x10 color print. No fancy-pants color printers back then.

(Wow, I feel old.... Where's my cane? And get the hell off my lawn!)

Good point on autofocus, I had it in my mind, but forgot to add it.

I would use manual focus. With a long exposure you have to wait for the fireworks and the camera will not focus as the light from the fireworks shows up. Even if it wanted to focus, I think the duration is quite short and the light flares shift through the frame so AF would not be able to lock on.

The f-stops I mentioned should provide sufficient depth of field, given you will have a fair distance to the actual flares. So manual focus would suffice to keep all in focus all the time.

I would prefer manual over "one shot" (Canon term), because in "one shot" the camera may pick a distant bright spot or change the focus point for every shot.

 

[MrSparks999]

Not done a lot of fireworks, but when i did, i used manual focus on an ef 17-40mm and set the focus to infinity. Seemed to work ok, but i am no expert.

 

[StevenAunan]

Canon sent this out to email subscribers, and I'm pleased to see that the author is Rudy Winston.

https://www.usa.canon.com/learning/training-articles/training-articles-list/photographing-fireworks