Taking Fireworks Photos With Your Digital Camera

With the advent of the digital camera, it might have seemed like there was nothing an amateur photographer couldn't do. When it comes to fireworks, however, most of us know differently.

Fireworks are incredibly beautiful, and a good photo of fireworks is enough to take your breath away as it suspends that fleeting moment of beauty for all time. But all too often, even with a great digital camera, the result blurs, or it just doesn't turn out how we hoped.

Fortunately, the brilliant fireworks photographer Jim Zuckerman has three tips to make sure those fireworks photos live up to your expectations.

Tip #1: Keep your exposure short.

There are two excellent reasons to set your exposure to a shorter time on your digital camera when you're going for a great fireworks shot: color and definition. A long exposure tends to wash out a shot, eliminating those stunning bright colors against the pitch black sky.

As for definition, a longer exposure can result in capturing more than one fireworks burst in your shot. And as you can imagine, trying to photograph the tail end of one burst on top of the beginning of another just doesn't work out too well. The biggest mistake photographers make when it comes to fireworks has to be right here: overexposing their photos.

Tip #2: Use a tripod.

If you're at a family picnic it might seem like a pain in the neck to pack that tripod along with the digital camera, but if you expect fireworks, you should do it anyway. A shorter exposure (and you're using a short exposure because you read tip #1, right?) leads to jiggles and blurs in your shot.

If you really want to capture that perfect fireworks display, your digital camera has to be rock steady, and for that you'll need a tripod.

Tip #3: Shoot in RAW not JPEG.

With RAW format, your digital camera won't try to alter the quality of your photo. In JPEG format, it will. It's that simple. There's a slight amount of quality loss when shooting in JPEG format, but most of the time it's imperceptible, making it a meaningless differentiation during everyday photography.

RAW format gives you a lot more control of your photos, while JPEG tends to let the camera make the decisions. So when it comes to fireworks, where things like exposures are so important, it's important to shoot in RAW. JPEG tends to wash out your colors and highlights, so control your own exposure and shoot in RAW format.

If you follow these three tips, you'll be amazed at the quality of fireworks photography your digital camera produces!

To learn more about how to take amazing fireworks photographs this 4th of July, visit 7PhotographyQuestions.com!