Tips: Photographing Fireworks – Beau Photo Supplies Inc.

If you are planning on going out and photographing fireworks, this article will hopefully provide you with some useful shooting tips to create colourful, well exposed fireworks photos!

First off, let’s get the somewhat obvious stuff out of the way. You’ll be wanting a camera that has manual exposure control with bulb or time exposure settings, the ability to shoot raw, and make sure to use manual focus as well as a sturdy tripod. Your lens doesn’t necessarily need to be the absolute sharpest at wide apertures since in order to maintain the best colour saturation and prevent the fireworks trails from overexposing, you’ll be shooting at f/11 or higher, although that is somewhat dependant on the base ISO of your camera and how good the shadow and/or highlight recovery is from your raw files. With my Fujifilm X-Pro2 that had a base ISO of 200, I was usually shooting at f/13 or so, with the camera set on bulb and exposure times anywhere from maybe 10 seconds and up. More on exposure times later, but f/13 gave me excellent colour on the fireworks trails and let me get good colour saturation on all but the brightest bursts.

So how do I set exposure times? Well I’ve had a lot of practice and I will dynamically build up the exposure on a single frame by covering and uncovering the lens with a black velvet covered card during the exposure to block the brightest initial bursts and also to build up the exposure to get more colours and styles of fireworks in a single frame. Once I feel I have built up the exposure enough, I will end it and then immediately start another exposure. The camera is set to Bulb and I use a locking cable release to start and stop the exposures.

I use this cover/uncover technique since quite often you might see a grouping of red fireworks, then green, then blue for example, where each group might last 5 to 10 seconds or so. If you capture a red burst, then block the lens for any subsequent red bursts, then unblock when you see green, then block and unblock when you see blue, you can capture multiple colours in the same shot and make every shot look like a big finale! Of course I am exaggerating slightly and even with experience, not every photo will turn out. Sometimes you might overdo it and overexpose the shot for example, trying too hard to capture many different styles and colours in the same photo. However don’t be discouraged; the more you practice, the better you will become.

Below is a 49 second exposure where I built up the photo from multiple colours and styles of fireworks. The actual time my shutter was open and the lens uncovered might only have been 15 to 20 seconds or so. By looking at a plane’s dashed light trail near the right edge of the shot, you can see that I likely covered the lens at least four times during the total exposure. Click the image to open a larger version…

Fujifilm X-Pro2 w/XF 35mm f/2 RF WR – ISO 200, f/13 at 49 seconds

Contrast this to a regular 10 second exposure I took with another camera that night (not at the same time as the above shot though), where I did not cover and uncover the lens to build up the shot with multiple colours and different bursts…

Fujifilm X-E2 w/XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 R OIS @ 42mm – ISO 200, f/13 at 10 seconds

Of course sometimes you may be lucky with your timing and capture multiple colours in a single, simple exposure, although the likelihood of that also depends on how the fireworks are presented. However, the cover and uncover technique allows for far more flexibility overall, but it is more work and somewhat limits your ability to actually enjoy the fireworks in person! I would like to note that this technique was first taught me while using film cameras about 25 years ago by Evangelos “Angie” Apostolides, the founder of Beau Photo who sadly passed away a few years ago.

Here are a few other tips…

1) If you use this cover/uncover technique, make sure you are not in front of a nearby streetlight since even a black velvet covered card might reflect enough light back into the lens to cause a loss of contrast during your exposure. Take off your lens hood if it is “petal” shaped, since you will want to tightly cover the front of the lens with the black card during the blacked out parts of your exposure. Also be prepared for a lot of perplexed looks and even questions when people see you doing that!

2) Get to where you want to shoot nice an early and set up your tripod, to ensure a good spot and also to make sure people standing behind you are not suddenly surprised that someone blocks their view just before the fireworks start. Below is a shot taken from the Burrard Bridge, where I had arrived about two hours before the fireworks were slated to start to make sure I got a good spot.

Nikon D800 w/AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G VR @ 70mm – ISO 100, f/13 at 59 seconds

3) Check the wind direction the evening of the fireworks and plan your location accordingly if possible! If there are winds blowing towards you, you will get smoke blocking your view and bright bursts will light up the smoke and ruin your shots, which is another reason to use the black card and block the initial bursts and only allow the trails to register. If there is no wind at all, then as the fireworks progress you will likely get smokier and smokier photos, so shots taken earlier in the evening will likely turn out better. Below is a smoked out shot from Jericho Beach near the end of a 30 minute fireworks session. I would have been better off shooting from east of the English Bay fireworks barge that evening (Burrard Bridge for example) and not west…

Nikon D800 w/AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G VR @ 200mm – ISO 100, f/10 at 5 seconds

4) Switch off the long exposure noise-reduction function on your camera, where the camera will seemingly take just as long to save the shot as your exposure was. The camera is actually shooting a second frame with the shutter closed, of equal duration to your original exposure, in order to automatically process out hot pixels. You will severely limit how many photos you can take in a night and it will be frustrating if you are waiting for the camera to save and end up missing a particularly great stretch of fireworks!

5) When you process the raw files from your shoot, be prepared to pull back the highlights to maximize saturation of the fireworks trails and pump up the shadows to add a bit more context to the shot if you want, for example to brighten up the foreground city. Add saturation and clarity if you like, and even a touch of dehaze can make the colours more vibrant and help cut through smoke a bit. If you have an older camera with a noisier sensor, then you can achieve cleaner photos with less “grain” by using the modern AI-based denoise functions in Lightroom or Photoshop, or programs like DxO PhotoLab with their excellent “Deep Prime” noise reduction, or AI denoising from Topaz, ON1 and others.

Lastly, the technique detailed above is only one way of shooting fireworks. You can also composite multiple shots in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect. You can also try zooming with a zoom lens during an exposure to add additional movement, use a long lens to isolate a smaller section of sky to magnify the fireworks trails and more. Experimentation is key! Do not expect every shot to come out a keeper either. You will likely have many shots that are overexposed, underexposed or end up being just “blah”, but if you keep at it, you’ll become a pro!

If you have any questions, feel free to email me and to see a few more shots from the great view I had from the now demolished Empire Landmark Hotel, see my own image gallery here.

Note that all the photos in the article were taken between 2010 and 2016 although many were exported from my Lightroom library more recently. A few more fireworks shots attached below…

Mike Mander
July 30, 2026