Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone is having a great 4th of July! I'm looking forward to having a BBQ with friends and then going to see fireworks in Roswell!

For those of you interested in taking photographs of fireworks, I thought I would give some tips to help you get the best photos possible. Fireworks can be a little tricky, but if you follow the below suggestions, you will get some great shots!

1) Set your camera to the manual setting.
This will give you the freedom to choose the appropriate camera settings.
2) Choose ISO 100, F/16, and around 8-10 seconds on your shutter speed.
The ISO keeps digital noise from entering into the dark areas of the photograph.
The small aperture opening ensures a greater depth of field.
The shutter speed allows many fireworks to register on your sensor, as well as the movement and light caused from the fireworks.
3) Place your camera on a tripod and focus to a length of infinity.
A tripod is a must for such a long shutter speed and focusing to infinity gets those distant fireworks in focus.
4) Aim your camera towards the area that most of the fireworks are going off at and zoom if necessary.
I used a focal length of around 100-200mm on most of the below photographs.
5) At the beginning of a set of fireworks, push the shutter and let your camera do its thing!


Happy shooting!

fireworks1

fireworks2

fireworks3

fireworks5

The long shutter speed will give you some neat smoke effects!
fireworks4

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great photos Nicole! I hope the wedding shoot went well! :) -Kori