Fireworks Photo Help

[Photo-John]

If you're looking for fireworks photography tips, check out the fireworks lesson we just put up in our new Web Photo School lessons section.

Fireworks Lesson >>

And after you take your fireworks photos, please share some in the Events Gallery >>

Have a great 4th of July weekend!

[mjs1973]

First of all, I want to give a big THANK YOU for adding th lessons to the site! Tons of great info in there to go along with all the other great info and advice this site provides! I was bored at work the other day so I printed off almost all of them, and stuck them in a binde for quick referance.

Now, my question. What would you suggest for a film speed for shooting fireworks? I heard that a slower film is best, but is Velvia 50 too slow? My choices are Velvia 50, or Provia 100. Which do you think would be a better choice?

[another view]

Either one should be OK, but I'd go for Provia just out of habit with shooting fireworks at ISO100. I can tell you it works very well but I don't think I've ever tried Velvia. I think Kodak E100VS is probably my favorite for this but Provia is very good.

There are a million ways to do it but here's what I do: If there's nothing in the foreground that I want to expose for, like downtown buildings, I usually shoot f6.7 (halfway between f5.6 and f8) and keep the shutter open for a few or several seconds. Experiment here - a lot like with flash exposure it isn't the shutter speed that's as important as the aperture.

If there are buildings, I try to take a spot meter reading off of them to pick the shutter speed I need to get somewhere close to f6.7. That's kind of how I did this one, with E100VS. It was shot on medium format two years ago with a wide angle lens, but I corrected the perspective in Photoshop. Last year I did something different and it worked great but I won't go into it... (It's that "D" word...).

Good luck!

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the advice Steve! As for the "D" word, that is still an option for me. I think it would be nice to experiment, and see what is working, and make any corrections right then and there. As nice as that would be, I'm still leaning towards the film. So many choices...

I almost forgot, beautiful shot!