Fireworks 2012

As this year's 4th of July celebration came upon us I was determined to actually take good pictures of fireworks.  I've taken lots of bad ones over the past few years, and now that I belong to a couple of photography groups I started to think, wow, I should try to take it more seriously and see what I can do!

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.