Capturing Fireworks

Diwali the festival of lights! A festival that the whole nation celebrates irrespective of caste creed, religion, because the very nature of this festival is all about LIGHT!

Not sure if you have read what my blog is all about. Though predominantly it is about Boardgames, it is also about photography and other stiff. Not that I'm a great photographer, but thought of sharing some thoughts that I picked up from experts, so that you guys can get better results.

With Diwali, the main focus was capturing fireworks was my main agenda. Lot of people think Fireworks polluting, use of child labor etc. etc. With all due respects to all of them I don't come from that camp. I simply love to see the colors and the pure expression of joy that it brings on people's face.

Right from the days of my 1st point an shoot digital camera, I was struggling to capture fireworks, but everytime it ended up with miserable results, until this time around where the results were somewhat better! Thanks to my friend Saurav (a brilliant photographer) and my guruof sorts. He gave me some very simple tips that ended up with the following results.

Long Exposure!


One of the tricks to capture true colors of fireworks is about long exposure. Meaning keeping your shutter spped low, i.e. keeping the shutter open for a longer period. What this does is allows more light to fall on the sensr and there by capture the streaks of light emitting from fireworks.

Tripod!

In case you want to capture those big spreading fireworks that light up the night sky- THEN DO NOT VENTURE OUT WITHOUT A TRIPOD. In fact for most fireworks photography you need a tripod, the reason is due to the above paragraph :-) Longer exposure means handshake, means a spoilt photograph.

Manual Mode (Preferred)

If you have the option this works really fine. Turn the camera to the manual mode. Set your aperture to say 11 or 12, focus on some point that is at infinity (meaning really far off) keep the shutter speed to around 3-4 sec and your are all ready to shoot.

Shooting flowerpots, Zamin chakkars using atripodmight become difficult, hence I used the Tv mode or the shutter speed priority mode, where you control the amount of time the shutter is open and the camera automatically chooses the aperture value etc. Here I have tried out many shots using different exposure times and you can see the difference in results for yourselves.

Longer the exposure, more interesting the shot becomes!

Not sure if all the point and shoot camerascome with the bulb mode, but people having DSLR's should definitely try out the bulb mode. Goto the manual settings and start turning your dial left. After the maximum value the display immediately shifts to the bulb mode. In this mode the aperture stays open for as long as you want it to be! Some of the shots that I got became very interesting using his mode. You can keep the aperture open for virtually as long as the battery lasts :-) but of course on a tripod.

Patience!

Unfortunately I was surrounded with fireworks from where I was and hence had no idea where the next one would go up, this makes patience a very important virtue as you have to constantly watch out for the rocket that goes up and immediately click to capture the whole drama. It can become irritating at times, but the results will be spectacular.

Hope this short write up helps some of you to take better photos of fireworks than I have taken.


To see the whole album, see http://picasaweb.google.co.in/madhujith/TheTrueColors?feat=directlink