Fireworks from the water

[SharkBait]

Not sure if there is much time, but I thought I would ask anyway.

I can take firework photos without issues on land, but how practicle is it to take them from a boat on the water?

I would bring a tripod of course, the water itself pretty calm and the boat we will be on is fairly large (50-100ppl).

Should I just leave the tripod/camera at home for this trip and enjoy the fireworks as is, or would I be able to get decent photos with 1-4 second exposures?

This will just give me a different perspective of our firework show so I thought I would ask.

[dcclark]

I suspect that a 1-4 second exposure, even on a large, heavy boat, will still result in more motion that you'd be happy with.

However, you can often get away with faster exposures when it comes to fireworks -- they're really quite bright. It depends on what you're going for, but you may be able to get a decent, motion-blur-free shot, if you're in the 1/2 second to 1/50 second range. That all depends on what kind of composition you're looking for.

[wulf]

1/15s and still some of the details of the sparks are blown out:



If I'd had a faster lens, I could probably have got down to 1/50s or more and still got a decent result. If the fireworks are a good distance away, then stopping down even as far as f/1.8 or beyond (if you can) should still give a usable DoF.

Wulf