How to capture Fireworks on the go..

[rollercoaster]

Hi everyone, I have been away for a bit from this forum due to work stuff but an opportunity is coming up next month that will provide unlimited fireworks to capture. It is the festival of diwali and that means fireworks, everywhere!

I am quite new to photography and I have a Canon 500D, 18-55mm, 70-300mm

I have attempted to capture fireworks one before but the results were not satisfying. here are a few of examples.

As you can see there are more then a few things wrong. Since it was really dark without the fireworks the camera was unable to aufofocus and I choose to set the focus to infinity. I mistakingly thought at that time that infinity meant everything will be in focus.

Also I had no idea about exposure setting other then that one is supposed to set a long exposure so as to capture the whole firework movement from being launched to bursting to spreading out and to extinguish.

Now coming to the real questions, the upcoming festival will have everyone using fireworks with a lot of variety. here are some examples:

Fulhari: (a long stick that burns slowly emitting sparks)
Sounds like a war zone but it is firecrackers all around : - )


Photography type:


Charkhi: (a coiled thing which when lit on a smooth surface spins around really fast emitting sparks)


Photography type:


Anaar: (a thing that sits on the floor and blows up a fountain of sparks)


Photography example:


A couple of western dudes take on fireworks: (really not how we do it though : - p )



There are more varieties like rockets that shoot up from a bottle, thinks called snakes, lari, pencil etc but this post is already turning into a crazy rant : - )

What I really want are tips on how to photograph such thing mostly handheld. Other then the above exampled crackers there are the mainstream fireworks that go up in the air. How do I focus for those in darkness?

Thanks for reading.

[morts]

There's a thread about this somewhere. I've seen it in Tutorials, I think.

Anyway, the short and uncomplicated way of doing this is:

Setup
- Manual focus
- Aperture priority with f/8ish aperture, Maybe f/10. Everything gets darker but there's enough light off the fireworks to compensate for that.

Shooting
Ultimately, it's trial and error.
- Look for where the fireworks are coming from and where they're going.
- Aim your lens at where you expect to see them and get your focus right when they do pop up.
- Once you have the right focus, the aperture should compensate for distance differences.
- When you come to shoot the thing you want, keep BOTH eyes open. You'll want to be looking through the viewfinder at the target area and the other eye is used to spot the flares as they come up so you know where to aim and when to hit the shutter. That way you can frame your shot without stuff surprising you.

Let me know if that helps!

[rollercoaster]

thanks that should helps. I will make sure to follow the guidelines and hope to get good snaps.

will also look for 'that tutorial'

[rollercoaster]

Originally Posted by morts

When you come to shoot the thing you want, keep BOTH eyes open.

Wow that worked awesome! I took a lot of pics in the last two nights. although after trial and error I resorted to shutter priority mode as there were a lot of variations in the fireworks, like distance, brightness, duration and I was not able to control more then one thing without loosing the firework action. Now just to post-process them all.

[rebel]

[rollercoaster]

awesome pic!