4th of July, Fireworks, flashes and funstuff.

Blue and white fireworks over a canal

That’s right folks today is Independence day, at least in the USA, and to celebrate there’s nothing we like more than shooting off big things that explode! That’s right it’s fireworks time.

So it’s time once again to get out our cameras and point them skyward and hopefully catch the fun as the heavens are blasted full of colorful stars of burning pyrotechnical stuff.

But wait you say, “How do we mere mortals with camera’s capture these tremendous things?”

Well that’s quite simple actually, you’ll need

• A Tripod
• A camera
• A cable release
• and a good idea where the fireworks will be.

Wait, wait, wait, you didn’t say what kind of lens I need!

Well of course not silly, I don’t have the first clue how close you’ll be to the fireworks you’ll be photographing, as such I have no idea what kind of lens you’ll need.

So here’s the setup, put your camera on the tripod, and set the mode to manual, set the aperture to f/8 or there about, and the the film speed to ISO 100. If you’ve got a cable release, you may want to try setting the shutter speed to bulb, otherwise something between 4s and 8s is a good range. You wont need to enable mirror lock-up as that’ll just slow everything down, and besides at 8s the vibration from mirror slap isn’t going to be around long enough to affect the image. Focus the lens and lock it into manual focus mode.

To give you an idea, of how things work, the firework display I’ll be photographing is launched from about 1/3 of a mile away from where I’ll be. This year I’m going to have two camera’s running, a remote and my primary.

The remote will have a wide angle lens on it (28mm equiv) be placed low to the ground on the far side of a pool for nice reflection shots, and in the portrait orientation. The remote is going to be set at 4s at f/8, ISO 100, on continuous drive, with it’s cable release’s shutter switch locked down so it fires for the whole show. My primary body will have a slightly less wide angle lens on it, again placed low to the ground with water between it and the show with me sitting there. This body will be set at f/8, ISO 100; but the shutter will be set to bulb. This way I can start and stop the exposure as I need ot depending on what kind of firework I’m seeing. In my case because of how far away the firework will be, my camera’s will be focused at infinity, and like I said locked into manual focus mode.

Crazy flying sparks head out in all directions.

Oh yes, two other things to keep in mind, one is battery power. All dSLRs that I’m aware of use battery power to keep the mirror up and the shutter open. Last year I had to run for my backup battery because I didn’t have the primary battery fully charged and the increased load form shooting caused it to run dead. If you have a battery grip that supports two batteries, it’s probably a good idea to use them. If not, at least make sure your battery in the camera is fully charged and that your backup battery is close at hand.

The second thing is film, or in this case memory space, my remote will be shooting continuously for 4 seconds at a time. If the show lasts 10 minutes, and it takes me 1 minute on either end to turn the camera on and off, I’m looking at about 180 frames being shot. At 10-12 MB per frame, I’m suddenly looking at roughly 2.2 GiB of data. What I’m getting at here, is make sure you have enough storage for all your shots in your camera, and doubly so if you cant easily get to a camera (like my remote) while the show is going to change the card out.

Both firework images in this post were shot last 4th of July with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and a EF 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens. Both were shot at f/8 and ISO 100. The first image was exposed for 4 seconds, the second for 9 seconds.