Tips for Fireworks Photography: Part 2

Composition:

Display fireworks mostly are star-shells which burst at a certain height to yield colorful effects. The prediction of maximum height and the extent of spread of stars after the burst is purely guess work. Hence, a wide angle zoom lens which allows for a less tight composition is preferable which you can crop later. However, it is always great to have a big exploding fireworks completely filling the frame.
  

Position of camera with respect to the display:

It is always better to face the display at the most deviating by a narrow angle from facing the front. Avoid facing the display from a side. When viewed from a side, multiple simultaneous bursts appear overlapped and details are lost.

Some people suggest that you would view the burst of the fireworks at an angle of 45° . Typically in big displays 8-12 inch diameter shells are very common and they burst on an average at a height of 1000 feet. A little trigonometry can reveal that  to view a burst 1000 feet above and at angle of  45°, you have to be around 1000 feet or 300 meters away from the launch site. 

Horizontal or Vertical composition:

Generally, a vertical frame would capture most of the details of a firework and minimize the non-informative dead space area. However, when there are horizontal elements like an illuminated bridge for example, take the picture in landscape mode.

Effect of smoke:

Fireworks generate a lot of  smoke and unless blown away by the wind , smoke obscures the photographs taken. Thus it is always better to be upstream to the direction of wind. However sometimes you can’t just change position according to the wind. In that case take as much photos as you can at the beginning of the display before the smoke starts accumulating and ruin your photograph. However, close up of smoke and bright light of fireworks can create some very interesting shots. So bend these rules generously.

One last chance of getting a clear good shot after the show is over:

Don't get disheartened if you were not able to take good pics for smoke, obstructing crowd, late arrival etc. reasons. For many a times, just after the show, the fireworks crew check for any unexploded fireworks remaining in the launch mortar and fire it and usually there are some.  So, keep  your camera ready on the tripod,  wait for about 5-10 minutes  after the show is over. As the smokescreen in the  air gets thin or vanishes and the people start going home, comes the big bang with a perfect frame filling solitary shell burst under the backdrop of pitch dark sky.

Tips for Fireworks Photography: Part 1

Apart from panoramic photography, I like fireworks and floral photography too a lot. With the 4^th of July approaching I wish to share some fireworks photography tips with you, which I’ve learnt over several years.

Choosing the Location: 

An extremely important point, perhaps as important as your camera. There are several factors to consider while choosing a vantage point. I’m posting a few of them as guidelines only and exceptions can be made for each of these.  Ideally there should be important foreground and background object which would aid in telling the story, frame the display and provide a scale of measure of the display.

However at the same time these objects should not block any part of the display of exploding fireworks . Particularly look for tall trees, electric poles, electrical transmission lines etc. which might be quite good for framing , but if allowed to intrude into the frame, they can destroy most of your otherwise ‘keeper’ shots. 

For most big/medium cities the displays are held at more or less a fixed place.  My suggestion is to scout your location both physically and online. Watch photos and videos in flickr or youtube of the previous years displays and try to locate a few good locations which would give you the best of views. Visit personally the place if possible before the display and choose a good spot.

Watch videos online to know the pattern of fireworks combinations, their spread and proximity from framing points and shooting location. (Which typically doesn’t vary much for big city displays over the years) .

Smoke from fireworks should not get into the  frame and  its something you should avoid as much as possible by locating yourself  in a suitable postion with respect to the direction of wind blowing. I'll talk about it in the second part of this post.

Also note that all type of fireworks don’t yield same good pictures. More on that later.

I assume you know some basic stuff of fireworks photography. If not, just any internet based tutorial will guide you to know the basics of camera, tripod, aperture, shutter, speed etc. requirements for fireworks photography.

Here are a few excellent websites for general fireworks photography tips:

http://digital-photography-school.com/15-tips-for-successful-fireworks-photography/

http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/photographing-fireworks-with-a-digital-camera_topic77563.html

Tripod and  accessories:

For fireworks photography a sturdy tripod is a must. On the top of the tripod I prefer a pistol grip ball head for quick change from horizontal to vertical orientation of the camera. A standard ball head with long lever(s) for securing the movement is good too. However such horizontal to vertical change in position also requires to recompose the scene. An “L-Bracket” might come very handy this regard. The L-bracket bypasses the need to re-level the camera after the position switch. However, you might need a little practice before using the L-bracket during the actual event.
  

Camera settings:

I use a DSLR (Nikon D700) and would strongly recommend to SHUT the Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) feature. It takes quite some time to process each image using LENR and you’ll miss a lot of shots if you desire to use this feature.

Typically ISO should be set to 100-200 range and aperture 8-16. As fireworks are specular highlights, you control the amount of light by aperture/ISO only. If you want to properly expose buildings at a distance or city skyline etc. in the background, you might open up the aperture to 5.6 to 4.0 even. Use the method described in the second link above to check for proper exposure. Properly exposed fireworks streak should retain their color at their centers too.

I prefer to set the focusing to manual mode and focus at Infinity unless I’m focusing on something close in the foreground. The shutter is kept in ‘bulb’ mode, and I prefer 3 to 7 second exposures. IMHO if you allow for a longer exposure and capture too many bursts of fireworks, the photograph becomes too crowded and the details of individual burst gets obscured. This happens very often at the end of the display when a lot of fireworks are discharged simultaneously.

For most big displays a few ‘test’ shots are fired just before the start of the display, to check the integrity of the electronic devices which fire them. Take picture of these test fireworks immediately and adjust your camera’s ISO, shutter speed and possibly white balance too for the rest of the show.  I generally keep WB as ‘auto’ but there’s no harm in trying ‘daylight’ or other settings. Particularly the ‘tungsten’ mode can produce pics with bluish hue which you might find interesting as well.


I generally shoot RAW plus best quality JPEG. Unless you have memory card size limitation it is always preferred to shoot in RAW, which can be better edited in Photoshop or other photo editing software later on.

Lenses and filters:

I strongly recommend zoom lenses for shooting photographs. Typically I’ve used Nikon 14-24, Nikon 28-80, Nikon 70-200, Nikon 28-300 and Nikon 70-300 lenses. I guess two lenses, a wide angle zoom and short to medium telephoto zoom will cover most of your need.

The Nikon 14-24 is of exceptional quality and highly recommendable provided you want a very wide angle view of the event.  If you want to carry just one lens, I’ll recommend the Nikon 28-300.  If you’re a bit far from the display or want to shoot the fireworks very closely use a telephoto in the 200-300 mm range.
I don’t use any filters except for the clear UV ones. I earlier tried color enhancer filters like redhancer but without much success.

Fireworks displays are often made over large bodies of water like lakes, rivers or seas and sometimes the very bright reflection of the fireworks in water becomes an element of distraction. One can think of reverse mounting a square format graduated Neutral density filter to compensate for this effect. In reverse mounting the darker part covers the lower part of the lens. However this exposure compensation can be done in post processing too.

Auxiliary Viewfinder :
This is an interesting accessory at least for digital SLR cameras. I first read about the usage of it for
shooting fireworks in some web tutorial, used it and really liked it. When you press the shutter while taking a long exposure, the viewfinder goes dark for a few seconds. Auxiliary viewfinders can be mounted on camera flash hot shoe and can provide a clear view of the scene when the viewfinder goes dark. Thus, you can then see if more fireworks shot meanwhile, their possible types and trails and decide how long you’ll keep your shutter open to capture these bursts to follow. Such a better ‘situational awareness’ while looking through the aux. viewfinder generally help in getting better composed shots.

There are a number of such viewfinders available, from very expensive to the cheapest ones. I would generally suggest that go for cheap ones like those used with the rangefinder cameras of yesteryears. These old one includes zoom viewfinders ( Acall, Alpex, Sun, Tewe etc.)  or turret viewfinders (Braun, KMZ, Optimus, Zeiss etc. ) or variable frame viewfinders (Leica, Sandmar etc.) which you possibly get from ebay for less than 50 USD. Even cheaper ones are the two frame (typically 35mm/70mm) tele-wide finders. The focal length of the zoomable finders can be matched to that of your lens  in the 35-105mm range for most of these viewers.

For extremely wide angle lenses you can get cheap handmade viewfinders like a 14mm or use a cheap LOMO type fisheye finder which is sold for around 10 USD by many ebay sellers.

In part 2 of this series I'll talk about the compositions. Meanwhile here's a nice site on different types of fireworks.

http://www.americanpyro.com/display-fireworks-glossary

Al Satterwhite's "NikonWide" panoramic camera

A few hours ago I received a mail from Olaf Matthes about a handmade 35 mm panoramic camera known as the "NikonWide" and made by the well known photographer Al Satterwhite.  

Olaf pointed out an old thread in Photo.net  describing some features of the camera. This was an interchangeable lens ( 65 and 135) 24 x 108 , 1:4 aspect ratio camera, made of two fused bodies. The camera also had an accurate self fabricated viewfinder.

Olaf also found a video on the camera, showing example shots and the lens changing procedure. I'll soon go through the book "Satterwhite on Color and Design" which contains some more details on the camera, and post it in my blog. 

Check the video , the first half being the Circuit , the classic rotational panoramic camera, the second part contains the details of the "NikonWide".

Many thanks to Olaf Matthes for this info, and motivating me to get out of my year long hibernation. For those who came late, click on Olaf Matthes link to know about his great handmade cameras.

New panoramic cameras from Holga

Recently two film panoramic cameras are launched by Holga, one is a 6x12 and the other one is an interchangeable lens 24x72 35 mm panoramic.


http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-120-pan-panorama-camera

http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-135-pan-panorama-camera

Blog Update

I've been a bit busy for the last few months to update my blog. However, I gathered information on quite a few handmade panoramic cameras meanwhile. I'll soon be posting about at least 3-4 pano cameras before the end of this year. These will include fused body cameras, stereo to pano converted camera, large format rotational  panoramic camera and others.




Wishing you a very happy new year in advance.

Nimslo based Holgawide

In another Nimslo panoramic conversion, Dirk Fletcher fused a Holga Medium Format Lens to a Nimslo body, for which the metal septums were sawn off.

I first came across this camera modification by Dirk in John Evans' book "Homemade Cameras: From Tin Cans to Precision Engineering", which I wish to review soon.

You can get the details of construction from Dirk's blog post, and can also see example photographs. 

I thank Dirk for permitting to use some of the pictures from his blog site. 

Handmade cameras by Kensuke Hijikata

Somedays ago while hunting for handmade panoramic cameras in the internet I came across this interesting post in photo.net . The post mentions a Japanese photographer and cameramaker who built a 24x72 panoramic camera made out of two fused bodies of  Konica 35 rangefinder, and which was featured in the March 1998 issue of Popular Photography magazine.

The post didn't mention about the cameramaker but I was able to get the copy of the magazine from my local library and found the cameramaker to be Kensuke Hijikata.

Kensuke Hijikata is a Tokyo based professional photographer/cameramaker who have fabricated more than 100 cameras, including a 4x5 TLR. He also established a handmare camera club which has grown up to 60 members. At the time of reporting he was making 4-5 cameras per year.

Pictures of four of his handmade cameras (along with pictures taken by them) were presented  in the Pop Photo article, including the 24x72 Konica based panoramic. The other cameras were a 6x7 with 80mm Schneider Xenar with a movable groundglass finder,an interchangable lens double railed 6x9 and another interchangable lens close focusing 6x9 technical camera. He named his brand of cameras as 'Kentax'.

The panoramic camera Kentax 2472 was equiped with a helicoid mounted 47mm Super Angulon. He also made his own viewfinder.

I was not able to find much information about Kensuke Hijikata over the internet, except for this site which is in Korean and mentions some of the cameras made by the Handmade Camera Club members. Use a suitable google translator to decipher it if necessary. It mentions about a very uncommon 110 film based panoramic camera( the only other subminiature format panoramic camera I know is the Viscawide)

I found another link that tells about  two mirror based pano cameras he designed which can use 4x5 or medium format film. Thanks to the original poster in the Yahoo Cameramakers Group.

I'll try to post the pictures of the cameras mentioned once I'm through with the copyright issues.