Seeing so many of your wonderful fireworks shots, I wanted to ask, what are your tips for taking fireworks photos? I found it really challenging over the fourth to get any good pictures. How did you do it? Admittedly, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to these sorts of pictures, so excuse my ignorance in this realm. I put my D40 on the nighttime setting and pushed the shutter and hoped for the best. The best certainly didn't happen. The shutter stayed open for a really long time and most of the pictures were blurry. I'm sure a tripod would have helped, but what else? It seemed like when I had the camera set on the nighttime setting, it had a really hard time focusing since I was pointing the camera at a dark sky. It would only focus if it had a firework already in the air to focus on, but by the time it was focused, the firework was gone and the next one was at a different place in the sky. Any information or advice as to the settings, equipment, or "tricks" that you use would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Elisabeth
Nikon D40, 18-55mm kit lens & 55-200mm VR lens
First, you NEED a tripod. I also recommend a remote shutter release, however I forgot mine and my pics turned out ok.
EXIF data for the pics on my blog:
ISO 200
f/10
Shutter speed 2.5 secs - 8 secs
Manually set your focus to infinity and then come back just a tiny bit.
HTH!
-Jill
Canon 40D and Digital Rebel XT
50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.8, 17-70mm f/2.8, 430EX
I think Jill pretty much said it all. For mine I used F/11 and slightly faster shutter speeds (1/2 sec - 2 sec) because the sky wasn't dark enough when they got started this year.
~Jen~
Nikon Mama
{the site} {the blog} {365 Days Through My Lens}
Thanks for your responses to this subject ladies! I am getting prepared to go to some fireworks tonight. So it looks like higher aperture and lower shutter speeds. I'm not sure that I will be able to use my tripod, it's a really crowded show. I'll bring it, but I may have to use a monopod. I hope that it will turn out okay. I'm going to play around with my camera today for a little bit to see if I can figure out how to create the settings and how to set my focus to infinity. Let's just hope that ds will allow me to play with the camera. Wish me luck tonight.
Elisabeth, did you get any good shots?
JANICA
jbo photo
jbo photo blog
All Things Boles
Hi Janica! Thanks for asking! We didn't have the best location for picture taking. There were a few bridges between us and the fireworks. These were the best ones I got (you don't want to know how many I took that didn't turn out well. Thank goodness for digital!