The festival of lights offers a great setting to click memorable shots as everything is lit up. And for every photography enthusiast, clicking photos of fireworks has always been a challenge. Capturing fireworks is tricky – you either get the shot or you don’t and balancing the brightness of the crackers against the darkness of the night requires some skill. Fear not, follow these simple steps and you will be well on your way to taking some amazing snaps that will ensure your pics reflect the beautiful Diwali vibe.
Use a tripod: Unless you believe in the artistic merits of a camera shake with long exposures, you will need a tripod to hold your camera steady, and to ensure you can focus on capturing the correct moment and not on keeping your hands still. A remote (or if you have a Wifi enabled camera, then an app) to trigger shots will go a long way in you being able to take your fireworks photography to the next level
Framing the shot: This can be a little tricky at first, because you’ll have to anticipate where in the sky the fireworks will burst. Once you’ve established framing early on, tighten all of your tripod adjustment knobs and leave them alone. It’s going to be a much more fluid composition than you are used to, so think about giving yourself a little more room in the frame than you might for more stationary subjects.
Focus and lenses: The simplest method is to manually focus the camera to infinity, which should be marked on your lens. You will normally be far enough from the fireworks so that once the lens is set to infinity, you can just leave it there. As far as lenses are concerned, wide angle is the best way to go, because with zoom lenses, zooming in and out will require constant adjustments to focus.
Shutter speed: if the shutter speed is too fast you won’t get any of those long light trails that make fireworks photos so dramatic. If the shutter speed is too slow, you’ll have blown-out highlights right in the middle of your frame.
ISO/ Aperture: To make sure that all this works together, make sure you’re shooting with a low ISO at about 100 ideally and not more than 400 as any higher will lead a noisy image. Keep your aperture narrow aperture between f/11 – f/16.
Experiment with shots: It always helps to keep a track of what is working and what isn’t – low light, bright light, and movement are only three of the hurdles you need to cross in order to achieve stunning photos of fireworks. Photography as an art form still allows you to play around and there’s plenty of scope for creativity – so get clicking and do share your best Diwali pictures with us!
It is after all the festival of giving and spreading light – what better way to do that than making memorable portraits of the sparkling fireworks around us!
Happy Clicking!
Wish you all a Happy and safe Diwali from all of us at Bragpacker.