When we bought our "real" camera back in November I was excited. The first camera we bought was a great camera and it captured a lot of shots that we'll have forever, but it pails in comparison to the range and capability of having a dslr. With that said, I am by no means an authority on photography. I'm a little sponge just trying to soak up as much know how and experience as I can, so when we made plans to brave the crowds and break Charlotte's strict "in bed no later than 7pm" routine, I got my game face on and prepared to take my first shots with my big boy camera. So here are some tips that I picked up along the way. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a point and shoot. I even saw some great shots on Instagram over the course of the week, but if you want to get some great shots consistently, here's a few ideas to keep in mind: 1-Use a tripod. This is going to be an essential if you want to get shots that aren't blurred and shaky. A big part of shooting fireworks deals with the shutter speed and so when that shutter is open for seconds at a time, I don't care how sturdy you think your hands are, if you want good shots you'll need something stationary and that means a good tripod.
2-Play with your shutter speed. This is the number on the camera that looks like 1/250 or something like that, which would be normal for an everyday well lit shot. When shooting fireworks, you'll need the shutter to be open for a few seconds at a time so the sensor can capture all of the light possible amidst the darkness. When we take a picture we think of a noise that sounds like "click". When you have a slow shutter speed you will hear "click.............click". The longer the shutter speed the more periods or time in between this two clicks. The first click is the shutter opening and the second is the shutter closing. I'll put the stats on each photo below so you can see what I mean. I only used a few different shutter speeds because I liked the results I was getting. Your camera might even have a shutter speed labeled "bulb". This means that as long as you hold the shutter button your shutter will be open and when you release, it will shut. If you are going to go that route you may want to use a remote shutter release so your hands don't bump the camera, resulting in blurry shots...hence the tripod once again.
3-Set your ISO correctly. ISO deals with how sensitive to light your film or in most cases your digital sensor is. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your camera will be to light. The higher ISO, the camera will me more sensitive to light. If you have your camera set to an automatic setting (boo-hiss) and it is darker, you camera will usually bump up the ISO to allow more light, but it usually equates to grainy or noisy pictures. Think of how your vision is worse at night. A camera can bump up the ISO to try to help, but you lose quality and crispness as a trade off. I set my ISO to 100, which sounds counter intuitive because it is dark outside and you'd think that a little extra ISO would help. I didn't want grainy shots so I manually set my ISO to 100 and I was happy with the results, but feel free to play around with you camera and see what your camera does in darker scenes.
4-Set your aperture correctly. The aperture is the opening that decides how much light gets in through the lens. You may see something like f/1.4 or f/8 or hear someone mention an f-stop when looking at the stats on an exposure. A lot of people would think, OK, it's dark so I'll want to open up the aperture as much as possible, but not so. I went with a few different settings, but generally you'll want something between f/8 and f/16. That means the hole is smaller which will let in less light, but we'll make up for that with a slow shutter speed. This will also allow for deeper depth of field, so more will be in focus from front to back.
5-Chose a wider angle lens. The wider the angle the more you'll capture in the frame. The fireworks we went to were at different heights and varied from left to right depending on where they shot them from and the wind and other variables, so using a wider lens let me get more action. This is called focal length and you'll see something like 18mm or 50mm when you hear people talking about lenses. I used the kit lens that came with our camera and had it set between 18mm and 30mm depending on where the fireworks were in the air. Sometimes zooming in a bit and sometimes zooming out a bit.
6-Miscellaneous settings. Don't use a flash. Most flashes only fire about 10-20 feet anyway, so it won't do much for you except make things look over exposed. Use manual mode if you can. Mose cameras have a setting that is marked with an "M". You can set the shutter speed, aperture, ISO and other settings when shooting in manual mode. Don't use a preset mode that has fireworks as the icon, just don't.
I'm sure there are more things that could be added, so please share if you have any ideas or questions. Again, this was my first time, but being prepared paid off and I am pleased with the shots I captured. I'll put the stats for each shot below. Enjoy!
18mm f/11 6secs ISO-100
18mm f/11 3.2secs ISO-100
18mm f/11 3.2secs ISO-100
18mm f/11 3.2secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 3.2secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 3.2secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100
29mm f/11 4secs ISO-100