http://www.wikihow.com/Photograph-Fireworks I thought this was interesting and might help some of us new people out there. I was also curious as to what the "seasoned" guys thought.
I think it's a pretty decent article that seems to be a few years old. Film? Who is using that now? The article makes me long for the old multiple exposure settings of film - you don't really have that option with digital except in post processing. ISO 50 for digital cameras - I wouldn't recommend it; you lose dynamic range from overexposing the sensor. Just the same with the new Nikon/Sony 12 MP APS-C sensors - their beginning sensitivity is ISO 200 rather than 100. But the tips on location is right on. Unfortunately you may have to watch the fireworks once before shooting them (so you know where the bursts will be) or know where they are shooting them off from). It's hard to move once you're setup.
Even though its a little out of date, most of the information is still good. While 50 iso is probably a bad idea with digital, you should still keep the camera set at 200 iso or 100 iso if possible for the best results. That will allow you to take long exposures and still use your lens' sharpest aperture (usually around f8). This is where it helps to do your homework. If you are going to watch a fireworks show that is held often like 4th of July fireworks at any major city or the shows at Disney, it should be pretty easy to find out where they are shooting the fireworks from. Knowing ahead of time where the fireworks will be going off and getting a good spot early will allow you to get great photos.
Learned that the hard way. Sometimes it's hard trying to triangulate where the bursts will appear, esp. if you're shooting from a...non-standard location.
why would you lose DR from overexposure at iso 50? i would agree with higher ISO but why at a lower ISO? first time i've ever heard that.
The only thing I can think of there Tim would be that at the lowest ISO, you may have to go wide-open with the aperture, or expose for longer, which might risk overexposing certain colors depending on the sensor. With wide open aperture, the camera might be more sensitive to particular colors than others - reds for example - and you may blow out that color range a bit. Personally, I've usually tended towards lower ISOs with fireworks because I'd rather risk some small color clipping to avoid noise, and I like to preserve more of the dark sky ambiance. I've shot Illuminations and MK's fireworks many times, almost always at ISO80 or 100 - and gotten some decent results. I keep my exposures short - 3-5 seconds usually - but long enough to keep the apertures a few stops from wide open. The rest is all up to framing and timing!
here's a discussion from over at photo.net: http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00JJVE Basically every sensor has a base ISO. I'd say all Canons are ISO 100, most Nikons are actually ISO 200. So when you dial in ISO 50, the camera actually is shooting ISO 100 with an EV +1 (which is why it's not normally available) so your highlights are at risk to be blown out. Kind of the same thing with the high ISOs where you are underexposing the sensor and then the camera push processes the exposure to match the ISO, increasing noise. At another ahem, site, one of the things they measure during a review is usable EV range, and their tests show a loss of 1 stop of EV at the highlight range at ISO 50 on the 5D. They used the same test to show how Sony's A700 (the one with the same CMOS chip as the D300 but with their own processing engine) started at ISO 100 but was based at ISO 200.
