How Did Your Fireworks Photos Turn Out?

[hjfischer]

I just received my mail from the lab with 4th of July fireworks negatives taken with my Bessa R2, 35mm classic, 400 speed Fuji Superia, f:8 and 1/200 shutter. But no prints-all the applicable negs were clear as glass. A few other frames on the roll taken during the day were OK, so I don't think film advance failure occurred. Questions: did I leave the lens cap on? Was my exposure setting way off?. If you've gotten some great fireworks photos, help!

 

[dmr]

I didn't try any this year.

Last year, to say mine came out awful would have been to compliment them. 🙁 Too much smoke, flare, and camera movement of all things. 🙁

At those settings you should have captured something on some frames, but from what I know, 1/200 is much too fast to shoot fireworks. Some recommend time/bulb exposures of several seconds, others say 1/4 or so. I'm no expert in shooting fireworks, but I think some kind of an image should show up on some of the frames, as long as you exposed when there was indeed some light in the sky.

Look carefully at the negs under a magnifier. Are there some (maybe very small) dark specks or streaks in there showing stop-action of the bursts?

They tell me (the ubiquitous "they") that for fireworks you want to use a rather long exposure and let the bursts "paint" an exposure on the film, similar to what the persistance of the human eye would see.

 

[Socke]

1/200th is much to fast!

Here are two examples from last saturday, not too impressive but usable to show what I mean 🙂


the first is 1/10th f4 and the second 1/60th f4 from a Canon D60 at ISO400. The difference to film isn't that much in this case.

 

[Roman]

Hi,
I agree with the others, 1/200 is definitely much too short.
The best way to shoot fire-works is to put the camera on a tripod, set it to around f/8 to f/11 (with 100 ASA film), and open the shutter with a lockable cable release on B; then you use either a black hat or a piece of black cardboard or something like that to cover & uncover the lens; just keep the camera pointed in the direction of the main fire-work action and uncover the lens when you see an interesting rocket; try to get a few into the frame, you can over the lens again inbetween rockets; all in all, you'll need something like 2 to 5 secs. of total exposure time to give the right amount of light to the film - this depends a lot on the 'brightness' of the night sky and density of the rockets, so a bit of experimentation is in order.

Roman

 

[Chaser]

both of these were shot at f6 15 seconds at iso 100 with the lens set to infinity ... wish i would have had a cable release....BTW the first is a local town's show and the second is illegal fireworks that continued off to the side of the original show area after the official show ended

 

[ErnestoJL]

For the few times I had to experiment with fireworks, i´ve learned (later than needed for the first time) that a reasonable exposure should be for ISO 100 (or less) from 5 to 15 sec. or more sometimes. Stop down to 16 or better 22 (if pos.) and use tripod and hat (or cap). 1/200 is excesively fast so to get just a bright spot if you have enough luck. Do not try to use an exp. meter as it should be fooled easily due to excessive contrast. If pos. shoot short rolls (say 12 or 24 exp each, changing conditions on each. This will give you a good clue.

 

[Pherdinand]

I thought the general practice for firework shooting is to keep shutter open for several seconds...hm-hm

EDIT: ok, sorry, i was lazy to read all the replies🙂

 

[wyk_penguin]

A black cap and a TLR is great. No squatting down to view the viewfinder; and when the you have to raise the thing on a tripod to get above the crowd, turn your TLR upside down and it becomes a nice dimished view (though your back will be facing the real action...)

 

[Socke]

I thought the general practice for firework shooting is to keep shutter open for several seconds...hm-hm

EDIT: ok, sorry, i was lazy to read all the replies🙂

Depends on what you want to achieve and the fireworks itself.

I like my fireworks pictures when they still show the explosions and I shoot handheld, so I limit my shutterspeed to what I can reasonably handhold 🙂

 

[XAos]

I'm with Socke, I was trying to capture what I saw (which does require a little bit of a tail - your brain does all that), rather than the long time trail version. At any rate, I guess I should be suprised that I got 3 or 4 decent shots out, since I had my GSN handheld wide open with 800 speed film.