Photographing Fireworks: How to get the perfect firework photos

November 4, 2011 @ 11:52AM

Photographing Fireworks: How to get the perfect firework photos

The perfect photography exercise for bonfire night, independence day and new years' eve!

By Haje Jan Kamps

Topics
News > Feature Articles

Oh my, it’s nearly That Time Of Year again, so perhaps it’s a good idea to brush up on the ‘ole fireworks skills, yes? Indeed…

So have a lovely celebration folks, if you’re of the drinking kind, then try to stay vaguely upright until midnight, at least, and give 2009 a becoming welcome!

Rock on…

Many a budding shutterbug has attempted unsuccessfully to photograph fireworks by merely pointing their film camera to the sky and shooting, resulting dark useless prints. With the advent of digital photography, photographing fireworks has become easy, just by following some basic steps…

Find a location away from the crowd and power lines. An elevated location on a hillside works well. You might want to scout out your perch beforehand: Especially on big fireworks nights (such as July 4th in the US, November 5th in the UK, and new year's eve in most of the world), a lot of the prime photography spots will be taken hours before the fireworks, so plan ahead!
Set the shutter speed to 1 second or longer. Don’t be afraid of underexposing your photos, though. You won’t.
Use a low ISO - you want as little digital noise as possible.
Use a tripod. If you can’t find a tripod use a nice steady base.
Turn off the flash. This might seem like common sense, but remember you are photographing lights, so you don’t need to add more light yourself.
Shoot in RAW. You need as much exposure latitude as you can get, in order to be able to do any adjustments you need to do in post-production.

Point your camera toward the sky and shoot. A key to getting a good shot is anticipating when the firework will explode. Initially you will have many hit and miss shots. As the show goes along, you will be able to perfect your timing, and getting better shots as you're learning!

Case study

This fantastic photo is called Fireworks over Zürich, and is (cc) Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

To get a shot like this, you'll need to use all the above tips, and you'll probably need to shoot in fully manual (although, interestingly, this shot was taken in Aperture priority).

Take a load of test exposures to see what works best; expose for the fireworks (so, use your histogram to determine how your exposures are working out) where possible, and adjust your shooting as you go along. The above photo was taken with an f/3.2 exposure, using a 1/4th of a second shutter speed, and ISO 400, with a -1/3 EV exposure bias. The results are gorgeous, but a slightly longer shutter speed might have made the water look more 'flowing', and could have increased the 'streaks' of the photographs just that little bit extra. Switching the camera to ISO 100 and 1 second shutter speed would have achieved both of these things.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that there aren't any hard-and-fast rules for how to get the best fireworks shots - Experiment and see what works best for your particular lighting scene!

Learn more!

Can’t get enough? Well, try the guides, tutorials and tips from Pixiq's Damien Franco, Better Photo.com, Garry Black, about.com, calphoto, DPchallenge, and Smithsonian institute!

This post was originally posted on December 30, 2008, but was completely updated and re-written on November 4th, 2011.

Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic

Comments

Anonymous

5 years ago

I took some fireworks pictures on Canada Day over here a couple of months ago, but I used a larger f-stop and longer exposure length (most of mine were for 30 seconds) so I got a blend of a whole bunch of fireworks together.

This is how mine turned out:
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l73/niqqer/Image056.jpg
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l73/niqqer/Image052.jpg
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l73/niqqer/Image049.jpg
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l73/niqqer/Image045.jpg
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l73/niqqer/Image044.jpg

Anonymous

5 years ago

I also tried some fireworks shots this last Canada and was very pleased with the results. I was using mostly 1-5 sec shutter speeds with f 7 – 11. Here’s one of the shots that I was pretty happy with…
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35677007/

Anonymous

5 years ago

I also took some shots recently – think they turned out pretty well.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=fireworks&w=91513118%40N00

Anonymous

3 years ago

Perfect the hint to try anticipate the firework explosion. I discovered it only after some tests! :(

But, I think you don’t need 1 second or longer to get interesting shot, not always at least.
2years ago I had no tripod, no steady base, and I was surrounded by many people (and I am only 160 cm “tall”…), but I wanted to do something anyway so I set the camera on 1/60 sec with enough high iso and here what I got:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightowl87/2395613336/in/set-72157604009130...

Maybe it is not a perfect and clean shot but I liked the result. To my eyes it seems even more realistic :).

Forgive me if I am not “normal” ;)

I wish an happy and wonderful 2009 to everybody!

kc2idf

6 months ago

Your link is broken.

At 164cm (for my fellow Americans, that's 5'3") myself, I feel your pain. That said, my family are such hard-core fireworks aficionados that for summer shows, we will go to the venue hours in advance, bring a picnic lunch, and park ourselves in a prime spot.

Our local July 4 fireworks are fired off from an island in the middle of the Mohawk River. We'll stake out a space in the park on the river's north bank around noon or so.

Naturally, being as cold as it is here in the Northeast during winter, we don't do this for new year's or other winter fireworks.

Anonymous

3 years ago

Nobody around here had a really good display this year .. I’m going to have to wait until July I guess.

Anonymous

3 years ago

Yeah, here neither – I didn’t actually see ANY fireworks at all this year! I’m a bit sad about that…

kc2idf

6 months ago

I wish I still had the 8mm movie I shot of the July 4 Fireworks in Albany, NY back in 1986. . . I was 15 when I shot this. It was one of the last 8mm movies I shot before moving to video, and it came out great. Shutter speed on the camera is fixed at 1/32, and I set the aperture to f/4 using ISO 64 film. Naturally, the picture was a little grainy due to the film format, but the overall results were wonderful. At 1/32, there was just enough motion blur to give the fireworks a streaky appearance.

The next year, I shot the same show using a Newvicon-tube video camera, and it just wasn't as nice. The tube camera made it a tad over-streaky and the lack of a manual exposure option really hosed up the works.

Unfortunately, the film was lost somewhere between high school and real life.

Hau

6 months ago

Here's a tip that I've just learned that will save you some frustration with missing the shot when capturing firework displays:

1. Turn off High ISO Noise Reduction
2. Turn off Long Exposure Noise Reduction

I like 4 second exposures for my fireworks, but I had no idea that the above settings contributed to the 4-5 seconds of Busy/Processing times after each capture. I was missing half of the show while my camera was processing each shot!

Here's my attempt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellohau/5809945573/

Good luck, everyone!

Indepthphoto

6 months ago

Any type of night photography is up my street!
These 2 shots were taken on the River Thames in Nov 2008. Although I mainly photograph long exposure night photography, I'd never atempted to photograph fireworks. I camped on a large concrete block jutting into and above the Thames, but this soon became full of people justling for a spot. Myself and 2 photographers camped tight into a facing corner not allowing anyone into our 'space'!
For me it was hit and miss, again having never photographed fireworks before, and I shot between 2-4 seconds. I did manage to get a few good shots, most were not too good as it was terribly windy and most images were either obscured buy smoke, or the wind blew the exploding firework sideways, thus not getting a nice roundish explosion.

Gi Lewis
iNdepthphoto.com