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