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Professional photographers look upon fireworks as a special challenge to photograph. They experiment with exposure length, light settings and remote shutters.
But if you're not a professional—maybe you just have a point-and-shoot camera—you can still take some amazing photos of Fourth of July fireworks.
All of the experts say to bring a tripod if possible; you'll want to take long exposures of the night sky, and a tripod helps reduce the chances of blurred images due to 'camera shake'. If that is not possible, though, you can do the next best thing: hold your digital camera close to your face, elbows touching your stomach to brace your digital camera against your body. When you snap a photograph, keep the shutter button held down until the camera fully takes its exposure to reduce camera shake. And shoot often; you're not wasting film!
Shooting with a flash will have no impact upon your shots except to trick your camera into thinking it needs a short exposure time. Keep in mind that your camera’s flash will only have a reach of a few yards, and the fireworks are much farther away than that. Switch your flash off.
Set your camera to Landscape mode, if it has one – typically designated by an icon that looks like a small mountain range. It’s the same as setting the lens on a film camera to Infinity. With the camera in Landscape mode you won’t have to concern yourself with focusing issues.
Use the highest quality-setting. By choosing a high quality-setting you will reduce the amount of compression applied to your images. JPEG compression degrades image quality. Less compression means better image quality.
Depending on where you live, you may have a hard time finding fireworks to phtograph. City ordinances may forbid them! Even the most restrictive areas usually allow sparklers. Sparklers produce a continuously burning trail of bright yellow or colored sparks. Since the burn time of a sparkler may be 30 seconds or more, this gives us the opportunity to do what photographers call "painting with light." Use great care around sparklers—they can reach 1000°!—but try taking a few photos of sparklers in motion. You may be surprised at the results!
Published 06/02/08
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