Fireworks, Mission Bay
San Diego, California, United States
July 2012
Canon 5D Mark II
Focal Length 105mm
Aperture 6.3
Shutter 8 sec.
ISO 400
It's quite difficult to correctly set your shutter when shooting fireworks. For this shot i shot with a shutter of 8 seconds. This allowed me to catch several explosions in one image. The difficulty in shooting fireworks occurs because the intensity of the light is ever changing. While you may be able to meter for say - the skyline. You could meter off of that with out any fireworks going off. However since you will be capturing added light in the form of fireworks, there will be overexposure in the skyline. This is a good time to use exposure bracketing. You also may want to anticipate the extra light that will be coming in and over expose. My suggestion - correctly expose for the skyline while there is a break in fireworks. Then use your 3 exposure bracketing increments (or however many you have, Canons have 3 typically) and purposely underexpose your 3 shots. this way you can pick the best one. Since you are shooting with a tripod (hopefully) you could experiment with HDR techniques. If you have an exposure compensation function you could also use that to capture additional exposures of the same picture. Me personally, I don't have the patience to do all of that, but if you do, it may be well worth the wait
It's quite difficult to correctly set your shutter when shooting fireworks. For this shot i shot with a shutter of 8 seconds. This allowed me to catch several explosions in one image. The difficulty in shooting fireworks occurs because the intensity of the light is ever changing. While you may be able to meter for say - the skyline. You could meter off of that with out any fireworks going off. However since you will be capturing added light in the form of fireworks, there will be overexposure in the skyline. This is a good time to use exposure bracketing. You also may want to anticipate the extra light that will be coming in and over expose. My suggestion - correctly expose for the skyline while there is a break in fireworks. Then use your 3 exposure bracketing increments (or however many you have, Canons have 3 typically) and purposely underexpose your 3 shots. this way you can pick the best one. Since you are shooting with a tripod (hopefully) you could experiment with HDR techniques. If you have an exposure compensation function you could also use that to capture additional exposures of the same picture. Me personally, I don't have the patience to do all of that, but if you do, it may be well worth the wait
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