Fireworks

[bobiscuit]

Will be at the Cannes Fireworks Festival on Saturday.

My only ever attempts at photographing fireworks was with a P&S on "Auto" :bonk:

Will have Sony A300 on a tripod with a cable shutter release and planning on using the kit 18-70mm lens.

Not sure about where I will be standing yet, but with the rather tall Hama Star 63 tripod and tilting live-view on the Sony, I should get a good view over other people's heads.

I was planning two types of shots:

1) Bulb mode, keep shutter open when firework is about to burst, release when it starts "dissolving"

2) Bulb mode held open - black card placed in front of lens and uncovered for each bang... This should "stack" several fireworks into the one shot.

Any advice about aperture, focusing, framing, etc?

 

[awp]

This one was hand held - and sometimes it's good to stand behind the crowd too!

 

[Greg K]

Do you need a wide aperture, or is something like f/8 fine? ISO?

 

[awp]

This shot above was 1/100th sec @ f/4 (-1EV) - 6400 ISO handheld. 24mm lens on D3.
You really just have to experiment a bit.

 

[Greg K]

Thanks.

ISO 6400 sounds a bit high for my D90. I'll probably use a tripod and go for a longer exposure.

 

[Uneducated_Rick]

Most people (that I know) go for a very long exposure, or bulb, and use a black card so that they only expose the explosion of the firework and not the trail (as it usually burns out to brilliant white)

 

[awp]

I think you need to get some other interest in the shot as well as the fireworks - like the silhouetted crowd above - long hand held can work as well . . . see below . . .

1 sec exposure @ f/13

 

[ben306]

I was aiming to get the trail of the fireworrk so shot this with f8, 4 seconds and iso 100

Not my best ever shot but you get the idea of what I was trying to achieve as it was just taken off my apartment balcony. Just gives you something to compare to the others

 

[Mangelwurzel]

I always use BULB exposure with a cable release and start the exposure as it fires and end it after the burst but before they set off a new one.

The actual settings for exposing the firework are not that important if you're after a shot against a black sky. Just go ISO100 with a medium aperture f5.6-8 and you'll get good results.

If however you want to get tricky and start exposing for bits of foreground and such you'll have to experiment with your ISO and aperture a bit.

Something i read about and would like to try this year is taking some black foam out to cover the lens between bangs. This way you can capture several bursts in one frame without introduding excessive noise and overexposing parts of the image.

I shot this last year on BULB, ISO100, f/10, 13secs