LightningPaul

Every year there is a big international fireworks festival in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Five groups of different countries give a superb firework show synchronized on music. Such a show takes 20 to 30 minutes. This image is shot on the 25th of August. The presenting group came from Sweden. They gave a fantastic show.


TECH-INFO: shooting fireworks is not easy at all. Determine the exposure is tricky. It's a bit trial and error using the review screen of camera. I used the high lights function and histogram to avoid too much over or under exposure. The most important part is the shutter speed. Times between 1 and 4 seconds works best, but it still depends a lot on the kind of fireworks. I try to set the aperture between f/8 and f/16 to get maximum sharpness of my lens and to make sure everything is in the DOF. The ISO should kept pretty low, under 250 (depending on your camera) if possible, to avoid any noise. To focus, I let the camera focus once the initial fireworks, then I switch to manual to keep the focus locked.
I only got my Nikkor 20-35mm lens with me. Perhaps it was better I used my 12-24mm because I was standing closer than I actually expected. Or even my fish eye was an option. I was shooting in RAW, though almost all of the exposures were pretty good. So I only had to convert it to JPG. This is done with DxO Optics Pro.