Bonfire Night

[davewebleyphotography]

Hi All,

I am planning to take some long exposures of my local fireworks display in Saturday night (if it's dry!)

I have not done this before, so do you have any tips?

Am I right in thinking that manual focus is the way to go?

Cheers,

Dave

[OldBoy]

You can still use auto-focus if you wish. I assume you will be using the black card trick, if so then use auto focus for the first take cover your lens with the card, remove card when the next lot of fireworks explodes, recover lens and so on. You can use manual if you wish and I know some prefer it.

[cosmicma]

the way iv;e done fireworks in the past is to use a tripod and remote shutter release using a fairly wide angle lens

usual camera settings would be something like f9 to f11 , 8 to 10 second exposure and manual focus
if you have live view it's not a bad idea to use it

how i go about setting up is i would wait for the first firework and set the focus up
an easy way is to allow the camera to auto focus on the first firework and switch the lens to manual focus without disturbing the focal point
by rights the camera should now be focused for the rest of the show ( i'm presuming your using a DSLR )
switch to live view and as the fireworks are let off i would basically press the remote shutter release button and see what comes out

keep in mind a decent fireworks display can fill an awful lot of sky it's a good idea not to be too close or you'll miss quite a bit

here's an example taken as described the settings are
24mm lens , 8 seconds shutter speed , F9 , ISO 100