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Firework Pictures Step #2...Setting Up Your Base Camp
The 1st step to capturing spectacular firework pictures is complete. After careful reconnaissance, you have found your ideal location from which to take firework pictures. Now it's time to prepare the area, your equipment, and yourself. As CICOTC (Commander in Chief of the Camera), it is your responsibility to complete step #2. This step takes a little bit more time & energy than looking for your flashlight, dumping out all your camera gear, and screaming Don't touch anything! You're preparing to take firework pictures, a relatively challenging event. There's no posing and there's no second chances. If you don't make the shot, all you can do is hope to get the next one. So, with that said, let's see what is necessary at this stage of the fireworks process...
All around you, people are setting up canvas and aluminum folding chairs. Not you. Why? Those folding chairs are quite comfortable and easy to slip into... and stay put in for an hour.
You, on the other hand, require a chair or platform that you can quickly and easily get in and out of. When you take firework pictures, you're moving... and more than you think. The last thing you want is to miss a spectacular shot because you couldn't get out of your chair quickly enough.
However, do you really want to carry that kind of chair across 200 yards of grass?You want to use whatever is solid, easy to quickly get in and out of, lightweight, and reliable. There are several possibilities, so check out the offerings of different chair manufacturers. This is a very personal decision that must balance comfort, mobility, and functionality (without being too embarrassing looking). To quickly see what's available on-line...
It has finally reached the point where you need to make all the proper settings and adjustments, in preparation for the beginning of the show. These are the critical ones...
The ISO number relates to how sensitive your camera is in regards to capturing light. Since firework pictures are taken in darkness, you want to be able to adjust the ISO accordingly. In general, the lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your "camera" will be to light (technically, it's not the camera per se, but it's much simpler to think about it that way). Therefore, for a sunny day on the beach, you would set your ISO to as low a number as your camera has because there is an over-abundance of light. At night, you would generally set it to a higher number, because for firework pictures there is a lack of light, so you want a more sensitive setting to more easily pick up whatever light there is. However, there is one major caveat... at a certain ISO value (varies depending on camera), the resulting image quality becomes unacceptable, or "noisy," the digital equivalent of "grainy." Unless you're trying to obtain a special effect, you want to keep the digital noise to an absolute minimum. Back to firework pictures... since there are varying schools of thought about ISO and long exposure, use this guideline: try different ISO settings from the lowest to the highest possible without noise production and see if you tell which produces better quality photographs. Since each camera uses different technology, it's safest not to use hard and fast rules. For example, if your camera has ISO settings for 100, 200, and 400, but at 400 you begin to notice some noise, use ISO 100 for a few firework picturess and ISO 200 for a few. Then compare, and if could tell which gives the better quality, use that one for the balance of the evening. If you like what you’ve seen, and would like to receive terrific tips via email, subscribe to our free newsletter Get the Picture? and receive our FREE eBook The "Must-have" Photography Checklist…What to Take Before You Leave the House as our special “Thank you.” Metering Mode Set the metering mode to "Evaluative" or "Matrix." Use the "Bulb" setting if your camera has one. If it doesn't, use the "automatic" setting as previously explained, in an attempt to "fool your camera" into keeping the shutter open longer than it wants to. The final critical setting is the focus. If you try to auto-focus on the night sky, one of several things will happen, none of them good. One way or the other, your camera will inform you that there is insufficient light for its auto focus to work. So what do you do? You MANUALLY focus your camera on infinity. If you can't manually focus your camera, focus on the most distant light source you can that provides enough light for your camera's auto focus to function. Then, keeping the shutter butter pressed halfway down (to lock the focus), reposition your camera to the section of sky you want to cover, and wait for that first rocket trail, and press the shutter all the way down. It is a little more challenging to take good fireworks pictures than daytime ones, but it actually sounds more difficult than it is.
Return to Step #1
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What would I suggest? Here's where it gets somewhat tricky... probably the ideal chair for capturing firework pictures is a bar stool with a short back. 