Shooting Fireworks - revisited

[aster]

I know it sounds counter intuitive, making a night scene darker, but the $$ is in the length of the exposure.

Actually, I the approach logical, especially for 30sec.-long exposures when lights can really act out of proportion. For shorter-time-exposures I think I should rely on the camera's own settings. There's a rub though, One never can predict the kind of firework to be fired next, one that is elaborately constructed or a simple burst that goes out in a few seconds.

I'll make trial-error experiments with the lights of the bridge first to find a good setting medium... I just remembered that I have some rather dark filters I purchased a year ago. I will start with those...

Thank you Lonnie, I believe we are covering some ground now and will get somewhere.

Yildiz

[adakshi]

Hi,

We celebrated a national day the other day and I shot some photos to capture the beautiful light beams and the fireworks.
I know this subject was discussed at one point in the past but hearing the others' thoughts wouldn't hurt so here's my question:

Some of the brightest lights in the frames actually have colours like green, bright blue in reality but they appeared as almost white due to longer exposure times. I tried many settings but can't decide on a premium setting.

Can you show some sample photos with your general setting approaches to give an idea please?

I used A100 and CZ 16-80mm for the shoot.

By the way, the team which orginized the lights and the fireworks is a family from Australia and I'm sure our Australian members can recognize who they are...It was a huge and beautiful event covering the Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea in Istanbul, so thank you everyone who helped it come through nicely! Excellent work!

Yildiz

Hello Yildiz,

First of all your second image is amazing.

I covered at least 5-6 fireworks shows .. so just a little bit of experience, not much. Just thought of sharing my experience.
I set my shutter speed depending upon the burst frequency and most of the cases it is 4-6 seconds. I change aperture to control exposure .. everything in manual mode.. even manual focus. Typical aperture value is F8. Camera tripod mounted, SS no/off doesn't affect IMO, I use wired remote and as soon I see a burst coming, open the shutter and and close after I get 2-3 bursts. Now in your case you have strong background light which needs good and correct exposure. In this case if bursts far between, I'd keep the shutter open for longer time and use my cap to cover the lens so that background doesn't get overexposed and remove the cap only if I see bursts. So you'll get bursts only with correctly exposed background.
For rapid burst I have an idea .. which I never tried .. Take a shot of the background w/o fireworks and then take those bursts with shorter shutter speed and then overlap .. there is no way you can expose rapid bursts and background both correctly. You can use ND filters but problem is too many bursts will ruin the shape.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
Ayan

[aster]

Hi Ayan,

Thank you.

You have an elaborate and different approach which I will experiment with. I copied an pasted it and will definitely see how I can cope within the time limits of firework bursts. Never used the cap or stacking before and that's going to require some getting-used to.

The next firework show may be at 24hours / midnight of the new year as part of 2010 celebrations. I'll find out how all my experiments changed things then.

Thanks,
Yildiz