Photographing fireworks can be a a confusing adventure. Wondering what gear to have and how to setup. Plus all the technical junk like aperture or shutter speed. I wanted to provide some info about what I do when I approach a fireworks show.

Gearing up for the show I start with my Nikon D300 and a wide angle lens. An extreme wide angle I find is really too much as the fireworks are normally always at a distance (your mileage may vary however depending on your access to the show.) I use my 17-50mm giving a bit of play room and not too wide to make things appear small. I will bring my L-bracket as 9 out of 10 times I am shooting vertical. Could you tilt your tripod head sideways? Probably; although I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have too. The L-bracket keeps your cameras center of gravity over the central axis of the tripod. The L-bracket can be very important and useful for waterfalls as well and landscapes for quick swapping. Doesn’t just have one use. Need your sturdy tripod and ball head for that L-bracket. Grab a cable shutter release. You could go wireless, but it isn’t necessary and it’s one less set of batteries to deal with. You could use your 2sec timer, but that takes all the romance out of it. Besides the obvious memory cards and batteries the last thing I would recommend is a cover for the rear of the camera. Not totally necessary, but with people holding flashlights or other glow sticks why have it mess with your exposure? Nikon normally includes it with your camera. Nikon calls it the DK-5. Your more expensive full frames I believe have a curtain shutter for the viewfinder. If you don’t have either a decent microfiber over the back does the trick (pin it with a rubber band if it’s windy) or whatever you could implement. Just nothing too heavy or dangling to induce shake.

Once we have all the equipment out of the way lets talk exposure. You might be asking if their is a magic exposure. Well there isn’t. I don’t mean to break it to you like that, your actually better for it. Not because you need to learn the hard way or anything, but because you will be shooting it artistically. The reason you want that cable shutter release is so that you can choose the exposure yourself! How do you do it you may ask? Put your camera into Manual mode. Don’t be afraid it won’t bite . Seriously though; we are putting it on bulb (run the shutter speed slower and slower until you see it past 30 seconds) so that you will control the exposure based on how long you hold the shutter release button on your cable release down. Aperture is variable, but I tend to like f/16. It keeps the fireworks from over exposing too much and gives you an abundance of time for creative results. Usually 9 seconds or so. My ISO stays at the standard calibrated setting for the lowest noise. This is ISO 200 on my D300. How do I know how long to hold it? Depends on whats firing. I watch the show (and not through a viewfinder (yay!)) and hold the remote down as each type of firework fires. When I feel it has painted the canvas or in this case sensor with enough photons I let go of the cable release. It may be short for only a few type of artistic bursts or longer to get a few extra trails or colors. Think carefully as that finale goes off, you won’t get it all. Careful timing however and proper choice will help demonstrate a lot is going off at once. Usually meaning a shorter shutter speed due too so much action.

Foreground can add dimension to your photograph. Just keep in mind where you are and try to keep it subtle. Not too large or moving itself. You want the viewer to look right to where the action is; the fireworks. This silhouette of the spartina (water grasses) in the bottom right hand corner was the perfect compliment and a pleasant surprise. I did setup trying to get something, but as soon as the show started a jerk planted him self in front of everything. It’s his show too (I guess :-p) so I moved and made it work.

Now heights of the fireworks may vary. Not a bad thing. This could be great to add some text for an occasion or event or the 4th of July . Don’t count these out yet. In the case of fireworks on the water I actually take off the DK-5 once it’s dark enough. I found the negative effects of stray light aren’t bad unless your near a campfire or something of equivalency. When shooting a barge on water I had to constantly adjust as the barge moved, also I would change zoom from time to time depending on the height of the fireworks and needed to go a tad wider. I was originally alarmed at the bursts growing outside the frame, but it can suck you into the action more if it isn’t over done. Experiment. This show gave me 18min of experimentation.

This is what happens when you hold the release down too long. As the light builds up it becomes more and more severe. For me I’m not a fan of the look, some might like the intensity. I feel it starts to out compete with the color of the images. It can happen some times. No reason to beat yourself up. To find the ideal time I just run test images. I act quick and rush a bit, but most shows are on the shorter end. Not everyone has the money of Macy’s. Plus when your watching the show you can’t help but get caught up enjoying the show for a few frames. Perfectly natural.

I wouldn’t keep noise reduction on. It will eat up valuable time. So go through those menus and turn your long exposure NR (noise reduction) features off. It can sometimes run as long as the photograph itself. You don’t want to spend 20seconds on a 10second photograph do you? Plus you can do it in post processing. I don’t bother though however with noise. I set a black point where the sky should be black and BAM (sorry Emeril) it all falls into place. Color saturation for me is handled by shooting with a white balance (WB) of cloudy. [UPDATE] Do feel free to experiment with saturation boosting. It is by no means off limits.[UPDATE] It adds a touch to the color with out skewing the images. You could try shooting in vivid mode as well, I shot these in standard. Shooting in RAW will allow you to tweak all of these type of settings after the fact however and save JPEG heartache. You might have noticed the fisherman in some of my images. Particularly my last one. I lucked out with this. No offense to them, but I can probably guarantee you wont catch any fish with fireworks going off in the same body of water 700ft away. Last I checked fish don’t like sound that you can feel in your heart over great distances. With that said written I hope I have demystified some of the fireworks troubles for you. Make sure to find a great show and share with us what you come up with. Feel free to drop me a line if I left anything out or have any questions. All the best and have a fantastic, patriotic holiday!