First, you need a good sturdy tripod. For the Burlington fireworks (click here to see my entire web album) I did not have a sturdy one, but the one I had was good enough as long as nothing made the ground vibrate. And by ground, I mean roof. I got invited to go up on top of a rooftop in downtown Burlington 4 stories up and I am so grateful that I had that opportunity!
Second, you need to get to wherever you plan to shoot at least 20-30 minutes early so you can figure out the best settings for your camera and what kind of environment you are in. For my camera, a Canon Rebel XSi, I used my 18-55mm kit lens, which is the lens I return to time and time again even though I have better ones. My camera has a bit of dust on the sensor due to the wretched construction outside my house so normally I cannot use a very tight aperture setting, but luckily when its dark out I can get away with it. I set my aperture to f/22 (my camera mode was Manual) and tested a few shutter speeds. I also took a panorama of the waterfront because the boats looked so beautiful with their twinkling lights. Let me tell you, I am SHOCKED that it came out good at all:
That was a composite of 5 photos, each one exposed for 5 seconds at an aperture of f/5. Thank goodness it was not a windy day.
Here are a few pics of the fireworks themselves, and the settings I used for them:
4 seconds at f/5.6
This is the first one I took and it was still a bit light out.
6 seconds at f/14
5 seconds at f/14
4 seconds at f/22
10 seconds at f/22
2.5 seconds at f/25
10 seconds f/22
The ISO was set at 200 for all of them. I also took pictures of the fireworks in my hometown of Milton, using a sturdier tripod. It made a big difference I think:
10 seconds, f/22
15 seconds, f/22
15 seconds, f/22
15 seconds, f/22
15 seconds, f/22
4 seconds, f/22
I feel that these are a little sharper, despite the insane amount of fog and smoke. They were also fewer and farther between so the long exposure times didn't blow out the colors.
