One main difference was the presence of sunlight during this shoot. Been in mid May (summer), the sunset on that day was as late as 9pm and at 9:30, there was still a fair bit of sunlight left. So, this shoot was extra challenging in getting the right exposure. But first things first... here are the things you should consider at such a shoot.
1. Location and the point of view. - Fireworks by themselves are pretty boring in my point of view. So, if you can get some landscape (a bridge, a river or a building) as the foreground or the background, that makes it way more interesting. Another way to make interesting shots are by including some other viewers of fireworks. Most people wont be moving a lot during fireworks, so may even get away without much blur with a slow shutter speed.
2. Getting ahead of time - This will help you ease into the shoot. Also will help you to pick a good vantage point for the shoot. Lay your gear down and take a couple of test shots with the available light. This will also help you to get a feeling for how fast the light fades out.
3. So now we ll come down to setting your camera. Its important to understand that there are no universal camera settings for fireworks. They change drastically from one shot to the other. The only path is to understand the basics. First and foremost, you have to set it to MANUAL mode.
(a) Always have your ISO value as low as you can go. In my camera it is 100.. so I would start by fixing that.
(b) Then comes the aperture.. For this I would recommend something between f/7 to f/13 (f/11 is the sweet spot in many lenses). You do need a good depth of field. But going beyond f/13 would make your images softer.
(c) Focusing in fading light or in complete darkness is next to impossible by using auto focus. Your lens will be focus hunting forever. So switch it to manual focusing and then turn it close to (not exactly to it or passed it) infinity focus point on your lens. This will assure your fireworks been in focus for the whole shoot.
(d) Now getting the correct exposure with the shutter speed is the tricky part. You have pick something to expose for before the show starts (right before) and I started by under exposing for the dimmed sky. The general rule of thumb is that the lower the shutter speed is, the more fireworks you will catch. But they should not over expose everything in the image. Remember not to get the exposure levels while fireworks are going off.. that can throw you off. One of my friends in this shoot by my side had all his photos like they were shot at noon because of that. Remember that fireworks are brighter than you think and that as ambient light drops, the fireworks become more prominent.
(e) Did I forget to tell you that a Tripod is a MUST in these shoots? Plus a cable release would definitely help to get the exposure without any camera shake. The other alternative to a cable release would be self timer (like 2 seconds) but that can be tricky. Next, its really important to listen very well. Because you could clearly hear the fireworks been fired off from the ground few seconds before it explodes. I simply listened to this, counted to 3 and triggered my shutter. Also try to use a wide angle to mid telephoto lens for these so you can quickly adjust your field of view to include all the fireworks in them.
Here are some of my results from this particular shoot. Please note that ALL PICTURES ARE COPYRIGHTED.
Comments are always welcomed.
Thanks,
Akila.
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