The Fourth of July is right around the corner here in the U.S. so I thought I’d re-run last year’s post about photographing fireworks. It rained – a lot – during last year’s fireworks show near my house and I wasn’t able to take any fireworks photos, so I’m REALLY hoping for better weather this year.
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Photographing fireworks is a lot of fun and can yield some wonderful results but you really have to plan ahead to get some good shots. Here are a few tips.
- Scope out a location ahead of time if possible. Get yourself all set up, make sure everything works, pre-set as many settings as possible. Fireworks shows happen FAST and once things get underway, you’re definitely going to want spend more time shooting than fiddling with your camera. It’ll all be over before you know it.

- Try to position yourself so you’re upwind of where they’re launching the fireworks from, otherwise you’ll be likely to get more smoke than fireworks in your shots.
- USE A TRIPOD. Seriously. I know I keep telling you to use a tripod and then I consistently DON’T use a tripod myself. But I really mean it this time. You really can’t get decent photographs of fireworks without stabilizing your camera.
- Use a remote shutter release if you can because pressing the shutter release manually inevitably causes camera shake. If you don’t have a remote shutter release, you can try to use your camera’s self-timer function. You’ll need to get real good at anticipating the shots because using a self-timer is pretty hit-or-miss. Set it for just a couple of seconds if possible.

- Shutter speed – You’re going to need to use a slow shutter speeds to capture the motion of the fireworks. Experiment with shutter speeds anywhere from 2-8 seconds or even longer. Alternatively, set your camera on bulb so you have more control. (That’s the setting where you can hold the shutter open manually until you feel like you got the shot).
- Experiment with getting double exposures. Set the shutter speed for 16 seconds or longer, trip the shutter to capture a burst of fireworks, then cover the front of the lens with something dark. When another burst is about to happen, uncover the lens to capture the second burst. Make sure you don’t touch the lens in the process.
- Aperture – this setting is kind of hit or miss. Start at f/8 and experiment from there. During the finale, you might want to stop the aperture down at least a couple of f-stops (and remember, the bigger the number, the smaller the aperture) because things are going to get real bright for a bit.

- If you have a point-and-shoot camera that doesn’t allow you to adjust things like shutter speed and aperture, see if it has a specific fireworks setting and if so, use that.
- ISO – try to use the lowest ISO possible, generally 100 or 200. Otherwise you’ll get a lot of noise in your black sky.
- White balance – tungsten or incandescent will generally give you the most accurate colors, but you might want to experiment with this as well.
- Charge your batteries ahead of time and have spares on hand. Also have spare memory cards on hand.
- Take a small flashlight with you so you can see to tweak your camera’s settings.
- Don’t try to focus on the fireworks – you’ll drive your camera crazy trying to find something to focus on and you’ll end up missing the shots. Put your camera on manual focus, set it to infinity and leave it there.
- Focal length – I generally shoot fireworks at the wide end of my 18-200mm lens.
- Filters – If you have a filter on your lens, remove it. This will decrease lens flare and reflections. You might also try using your lens hood if you have one.

- When the show starts and you start taking shots and any time you change settings thereafter, check your LCD display to see how your shots are coming out, but don’t check after every shot during the show or you’re going to miss a lot of the action. Do check periodically though.
- Take a LOT of photos. Seriously. A LOT. Just know that most of your shots won’t turn out. Last year I took 300 photos in 34 minutes and just over a quarter of them turned out even halfway OK.
- Once it’s all over and you’ve transferred your photos to your computer, learn from what you’ve done and take some notes if you have to so your fireworks photos next year will be even better. I first photographed a fireworks display in 2008 and I can truly say that my 2009 photos were MUCH better because I took the time to learn how to improve them after 2008. And I’m confident that this year’s photos will be that much better.

















