Black Card Photography II - Fireworks

Fireworks photography is a relatively easy theme in photography and the two most important gadgets needed are a tripod and any camera that has an adjustable shutter speed no less than a few seconds. The principle of fireworks photography is to catch the moving trail of fireworks from launch until it's finished exploding which usually takes a few seconds. As a long time exposure is used in fireworks photography, secure your camera to something that will ensure it doesn’t move during the photo shooting. If you have a better camera, there are a few settings to perfect the fireworks photography.

General settings:
Set your camera and lens to manual; focus on something in a distance (infinite usually works just fine); a low ISO (100/200) to get the cleanest shot possible; turn off Noise Reduction to maximize the number of photos you can capture (noise reduction can slow you down by half); photo format in RAW (an ideal format for post editing if needed, expecially for correcting white balance and noise reduction)

Aperure setting:
Set your aperture to f8-f16 with ISO 100, which gives you a pretty good depth-of-field. As the emission of fireworks is very bright, a mid to small range of F stop usually works well in such settings. The difference between mid (f8) and small (F16) aperture is that a smaller aperture gives thiner trails of light whereas bigger aperture fattens trails out.

Shutter speed:
Set the shutter speed to buld. A remote release in hand in buld mode gives you total control of shutter speeds, resulting in various fireworks patterns. (Details later)

Black card:
Unlike my black card photography part I, the application of a black card in fireworks photography isn't to get a balanced exposure in a great dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of the image but to black out smoke as well as to prevent an over-exposed image due to too many 'bursts' in one frame with complex exposures.



Left: over-exposed due to too many bursts at the bottom of the frame; right: the complete trails of fireworks in different altitudes were captured by using a black card.

Black card photography in fireworks, first, use spot metering mode to measure the exposure time of the foreground and follow the steps as follows:



Don't be afraid to try, you never know what you might get as a result. Good luck and let me know.