Shooting Fireworks

[Woza]

I'm very lucky in that my office is throwing an event for the fireworks at Edinburgh castle this weekend. Our boardroom has fantastic views directly on to the castle and weather permitting we will be allowed on the roof.

The book I bought with my new slr advises an aperture of 1 and shutter speed of 10/20 on manual mode, does anyone else have any hints or tips?

Thanks,

Woza.

[ruaricoles]

I've only actually tried it once, but one method is to set up on a tripod with a very long shutter speed then cover the lens with your hand or a piece of card or something just revealing it when the fireworks explode. You'll then get lots of fireworks overlaid on each other in your pic, and hopefully a reasonably exposed background too (ie. the castle, if it's in view). I'm sure others will have some decent examples.

[TonyHetherington]

An aperture of 1.0 ? You must have a very expensive lens, then

I've had good fun shooting fireworks (see my website; www.tonyhetherington.com ), and got some ok results.

My tips;

Tripod (without doubt)
Use a remote release
Use "bulb mode".
Use a fairly middle-of-the-road aperture (not large like 1.0 !) - you're going to have the shutter open for quite a while

Open the shutter, let fireworks go up, explode, couple of seconds, then close shutter. It will take a little practice to know what shots come out like, but that's how I ended up with the shots on my website.

[mike9009]

Shutter at 5 seconds worked best for me. At the time I didn.t have a remote shutter so used the timer, although it was more difficult to get the timing right!!. Tripod an absolute must.

Good luck....

Mike

[beano500]

Like Tony says really. Here are some examples. But you have to experiment for the effect you want, and depending on the other lighting, reflections et cetera....

At f/9.0 on ISO100:

16 seconds:




and just 3.8 seconds:

[jon-]

If you want to stack between shots and don't want too much ambient to build into the photo you can cover the lens with cardboard or something while the next batch of fireworks are queuing. You can create some lovely layered effects that way.

Also it's worth remembering aperture + iso will control how bright the fireworks trails are in the picture, but ambient is controlled by shutter speed, aperture and iso. If you're getting too much ambient but the firework trails are perfect you can just dial down the shutter speed and vice versa.

[rasputin]

I'm also planning to be at my office with a good view of the Edin fireworks .

I got a bit of fireworks practice last month. I found that with a remote shutter release, something like F/10 and ISO 100 worked well.

Hold down shutter when firework goes up, release shutter after it has exploded and stopped doing anything "interesting". Usually about 10 seconds or so. I tried stacking, as well as F/16 with longer shutter to capture more fireworks, but it made the picture look too "crowded" IMO.

Oh and another tip - try setting up for pictures right at the start. Once they've been on a while there'll be a lot of smoke which doesn't always look good.

Edited by rasputin on Thursday 3rd September 10:53

[Rob13]

bulb mode?

[TonyHetherington]

Rob13 said:

bulb mode?

Keeps the shutter open for as long as you want - be that 1 second or (literally) 1 week.

On my remote release you can lock the button, so for fireworks I open shutter, lock button, leave for 10 seconds while fireworks go up, explode, come down a bit, then unlock and close shutter.

That way you're not controlled by the shutter speed you happen to have dialled in. I tried it by using fixed shutter speeds but found I ended up with too much in the shot, or not enough, or missed a great firework by 0.1 seconds With bulb I open shutter, wait for appropriate amount of fireworks, close shutter.

[Ricepilot]

rasputin said:

Oh and another tip - try setting up for pictures right at the start. Once they've been on a while there'll be a lot of smoke which doesn't always look good.

Edited by rasputin on Thursday 3rd September 10:53

Thats a great piece of advice...



I used to shoot very long exposures but have recently started getting quicker.

You tend to capture the initial explosion (which tends to be good) or 1 inch long trails in the sky (which is bad).
Shoot on a high speed burst of shots just as the shell reaches the peak of its trajectory. You do end up binning lots and lots though(so take a high capacity memory card).

Also, try b&w every so often.

Some examples:


1/60 second



1 second


1/20 second


And sometimes if you can get far enough away some foreground interest can liven things up.

1/30 second

[Woza]

WOW - all of these pictures are amazing.

I think im going to go with bulb mode and adjust the aperture as i see fit on the night - fingers crossed i get some good results!

Woza.

[TonyHetherington]

To give a couple of examples; I do try to get some sort of focal point in sometimes too (in this case, the fair);



or here, the tree line;



You can see here though if you leave the shutter open for TOO long, you get lots of fireworks which can look great, but you also get the smoke start to drift across which blurs a little (see bottom right of cluster)

[Woza]

well i went to the fireworks at edinburgh castle last night, only had my 18-70 lens and didnt have a tripod but for my first effort and having only had an slr for 2 weeks im pretty chuffed with the results

C&C welcome, but be nice!!!

Woza.

http://www.photoboxgallery.com/woza/collection?alb...

[TonyHetherington]

Some nice ones in there! Looks like you were a bit unlucky with the smoke in some cases as it moved across the open shutter.

How did you take the shots?

[Woza]

TonyHetherington said:

Some nice ones in there! Looks like you were a bit unlucky with the smoke in some cases as it moved across the open shutter.

How did you take the shots?

Thanks tony, I ser camera to shutter priority and then set it to 2 seconds.

Others have said I should have used manual focus, maybe next time!

Woza.

[Quick silver]

Ricepilot said:

I used to shoot very long exposures but have recently started getting quicker.

1/20 second

Bloody hell - this ones @ 1600 asa.........I'm impressed