How to get sharp fireworks images

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique

It’s that time of year here in the States where we set things on fire so we can watch explosions and burning metal while losing our hearing.  Yes, it’s time for some fireworks.  Fireworks is a great time to practice your manual shooting skills.  There is no single perfect formula for getting the photo, but there are a few guidelines I can offer.

1) Use a tripod.  Get in a spot that has a relatively clear view of the sky and make sure you set your tripod up as high as possible to insure you get above as many heads if you are in a crowd.

2) Use a wide angle lens.  If you got something like an 18-55 that’ll work great.  It doesn’t have to be extremely fast glass but you want a wide angle lens unless you are miles away from the display.

3) Manual, manual, manual.  You have to do everything manual here.  Manual focus.  Don’t worry, you can just rotate the focus to infinity and that’ll work just fine. You’ll also have to set all other settings on your camera because the automatic settings are expecting a bright scene and you want yours to be mostly black.

4) Lock your ISO down to 100 or 200.  These will give you the least noisy images on most cameras.

5) Shutter speed and aperture will be a balancing act depending on the look you are going for.  If you want most everything in focus, you’ll need an aperture between f/8 and f/11.  You really don’t want to go higher than f/11, because that’ll make your exposure really long.  For me I think the exposure is more important than aperture, so I’d set my exposure 2 or 3 seconds and see what aperture is required to get the shot starting at f/11 and working down.

6) Use a wired or wireless shutter release.  When you hear the mortar fire, press the shutter.  The firework takes about half a second to detonate and then displays for about a second.  If you go longer you get some really interesting streaky fireworks, which may not be what you want.

7) When you get to the end of the display, there will be a lot of fireworks all at once which will brighten the sky.  Keep your exposure at whatever you had been shooting with the night and close your aperture beyond f/11 to f/16 or f/22. Hope this helps.

For this post I’m displaying some photos  of my friend Mark Schaffer.  Take a look at his site at http://knowsphotos.com.

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