How to take spectacular fireworks photos

With Fourth of July just around the corner, it is time to brush up on our technique for taking great fireworks photos. With just a few adjustments to your camera settings you can get amazing photos with every shot.

What you’ll need

One of the key elements of incredible fireworks photos is a very slow shutter speed. This means a steady tripod is essential. The next thing you are going to need is a fairly wide-angle lens. A 24-70mm full frame lens or an 18-55mm lens for cropped sensor cameras are a great choice. Your lens doesn’t have to be a lens with a wide aperture (like f/2.8), since we will use a fairly small aperture setting. Once you have got you tripod and lens ready we need to talk about location.

Scouting your location

It is a really good idea to scout out a location with a clear view of the fireworks in advance of the show. Checking out the location ahead of time will ensure you get the best spot to shoot from. On the day of the show make sure you arrive early to get an unobstructed view at your desired location.

Camera settings

Set you camera to manual mode. Next, make sure that auto ISO is off. Set your ISO to 200. Set your aperture to f/11. Next is your shutter speed.

A shutter speed of 4 seconds tends to work really well. This will create nice long streaks as the fireworks travel through the air. However, stepping down the shutter speed to three seconds will create shorter streaks but will still have a pleasing effect.

If your background is interesting, try expanding your shutter speed to 5 seconds to capture even more detail behind the fireworks. As the show builds to a finale, with a longer shutter speed you may have too much smoke in the images obscuring some of the fireworks. If this is the case shorten your shutter speed slightly from 4 seconds to 3 or even 2 seconds.

Timing your fireworks

A pro trick is to wait to press the shutter release button until you hear the boom of a firework being launched. This will get the light trail from the ground to sky and works great with a 4-second shutter speed.

Another pro tip is to use a remote to avoid any camera shake for super sharp photos. If you do not have a remote, you can use the exposure delay release mode on your camera. Set the exposure delay mode to add a half second delay after the shutter button is pressed. If you aren’t sure how to do this. you can also use the self timer. However, this makes it harder to time your shutter activation to the boom from the launch.

Using the tips above you are going to get some amazing fireworks photos. Don’t forget to share some with us in the Photofocus Community!