David Drufke, Minneapolis photographer, storm chasing, sports, outdoor

Here’s some pictures of the Richfield Fireworks from July 4th, and a little bit about how we photographed them.

Location:

Try to include something other than the fireworks.  We weren’t able to do this with our photos this time around, but a nice reflective lake, river, or building, or a dimly lit scene, such as a downtown area work nicely.

Equipment:

We photographed these with small interchangeable lens camera called the Olympus PEN E-PL1.  We bought this affordable camera to use when we didn’t want to drag our large, heavy, and conspicuous SLR cameras around, but wanted better picture quality than a typical point and shoot.  We used a Gitzo CF tripod to photograph the fireworks.  Having a tripod is essential, as shutter speeds are long when photographing fireworks.

Camera Settings:

We always photograph fireworks at our lowest normal ISO, in this case, ISO 100.  We use the “bulb” shutter speed setting for fireworks.  This means we hold down the shutter button for as long as we want, and the shutter stays open until we release the button.  This allows us to choose what we want to include in the photo.  We hold the shutter down, and after a few bursts we think would make for a nice photograph, we release the shutter.  It works much better for us than using a set time, but if you don’t have the bulb option, you can set your camera to a shutter speed of 3-10 seconds.  Shutter speed doesn’t affect the brightness of the fireworks, but it affects the brightness of the background, and how many fireworks are in the photo.  A shutter speed that is too short will result in the fireworks appearing as “dots” or being incomplete.  For aperture, we used between f11 and f16.  Your aperture will control how bright the fireworks are in the photo.  Choose an aperture that gives the photographs a nice color.  If your aperture is too wide open, the fireworks will appear white, because they are blown out.  You can always brighten the fireworks in your post processing, but it’s hard to make them darker if you’ve blown them out.  We shoot in RAW, but choose a white balance of daylight on the camera.

We hope this was helpful.  Use the comment for if you have any questions!