HOME | GALLERY | WORKSHOPS | ASK GARRY!

Garry Black Photography

Question:

Garry.

I am a photographer and have to photograph a fireworks display on July 3 and 4th. Came upon your very informative web site with very good tips about photographing fireworks. I have a question? You mentioned that you sometimes use two cameras to photograph your fireworks display. How do you manage to judge the time exposure of each camera? Do you use the same time for each exposure on both cameras? Or do you set one camera at f8 and the other at f11? I will be using a film speed of 100 Fuji Provia.

Your help and additional input is greatly appreciated.

 

Answer:

I use the same F-Stop on each camera body (F 11 with 100 ISO is a pretty good bet, but if you have never photographed the fireworks in that location you may want to bracket the exposures). I have found that Velvia works much better than 100 ISO, because it is a more contrasty film and because of this it tends to eliminate the smoke in the background much better.

The exposures are staggered. I will start the exposure on one camera body and then approx. 5 seconds later start the exposure on the other camera. Knowing when to stop the exposures depends upon the number of bursts their size and brightness and finally how much smoke is in the sky. Lot of variables to deal with! Usually I watch the area of the sky that my camera is covering and wait until there has been 2 - 3 bursts that are overlapping one another. Which means usually having 5 - 10 bursts within your frame. This depends on the angle of lens that you are using and the distance that you are from the fireworks.

Good Luck!