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Compositing Fireworks
uly fourth and the celebration of America’s founding is just a month away. Many of you have photographed fireworks in the past, but I wanted to go over the settings I recommend for shooting them, and then I’ll explain how to [easily] add them to a twilight or night shot you already have in your files. Camera settings In determining the settings on your camera, there are two considerations: 1) exposure, and 2) the length of the streaks in the fireworks bursts. My best images come from using a
shutter speed of 1.6 seconds, and the aperture that gives me optimal exposures is f/14 at 100 ISO. At the end of the show, the finale lasts several seconds and you might want to use a much longer shutter speed to compound the action. This won’t change the exposure, but when two or more bursts overlap, the light accumulates as in a double or triple exposure. The solution, then, is to shoot at f/20. More challenging, though, is focus. You can’t reliably focus on fireworks. Therefore, before it gets dark, focus on something far away. If you use a wide angle lens (I recommend a 1635mm or equivalent), simply focus on a distant
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