shooting fireworks?

[ctgoldwing]

I have only had my 10D for about a month now & would like to shoot some fireworks displays this weekend. Can anyone offer some settings tips? manual, f8, 1/30?
Thanks!
Jerry

[prosurfer]

Click Search and try "fireworks" ;)

[Transfix]

f/8 for sure.

I'd reccomend that you take a card with you to cover the lens at various times during an exposure.

Since you can see the trail of the firework as it's traveling upward, you can use the card to block that portion out if you wanted. Or use the card to block any portion of the exposure.

happy hunting!

[soumya63]

Transfix wrote:
f/8 for sure.

I'd reccomend that you take a card with you to cover the lens at various times during an exposure.




That may not be a good idea as digital noise increases rapidly with the length of exposure.

What I may do is to carry a 35mm or 50mm lens, a remote release and a sturdy tripod. Set the camera on manual focus and move the ring to infinity. Set iso at 100, aperture at 8.0 and shutter speed at 2 second.

Do not try to see through viewfinder while shooting. All you need to do is to point the camera to the part of sky where most of the activity is expected. Turn the camera on and make sure long exposure noise reduction option is on.

Keep the remote release cable at hand and time to time half press the shutter to prevent the camera to go to sleep mode. Press the shutter as you see a firework is blooming in the sky. Do not worry, fireworks are not like lightning, so it is possible to capture them easily in this way.

Compose in such a way so that you get some skyline or cityscape to provide scale and make shot interesting.

Wish you all the best. Do to forget to show us your harvest of 4th July.

Soumya

http://www.mitraphoto.com

[LuiG]

I've shoot fireworks on film and the best ones were taken with a canon A-1 with multiple exopsures. I took 3 to 4 bursts on the topmost part of the frames and took the whole roll, then rewind the roll and took some cityscapes.

I've even won a contest prize using this technique!!!

With a quality digital camera as the 10D it's easier. Just shoot a lot of pictures with 1 to 2 sec exposure ( use a tripod), shoot various skylines or landmarks at night and edit the photos in photoshop as you please.

Some of you wont agree on this type of picture taking but belive me the results can be amazing.

[abh555]

http://www.nyip.com/tips/firewksintro2003.php

I got a few good ones at Disney last week:

http://www.pbase.com/abh/magickingdom (go to the 4th & 5th pages)