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Gear List

Canon EOS 5D Mk II

Canon EF 50mm f1.8

Neutral Density Filter (ND2, 0.3)

Basic cheap Rocketfish tripod

Preparation

- Know your lens, and know the limit. Know EXACTLY when the focus will be tack-sharp on fireworks (just a smidgen before infinity)

- Tripod must be sturdy, and using a shutter release in BULB mode is ideal (these shots were using the on-camera shutter button)

Settings

- Varied ISO: from 100 to 400

- Varied F-Stop: f2.8 - f7.1

- Varied Shutter: 1s - 2s (BULB mode)

Taking The Shot

1. Prepare: when you hear/see a firework shooting into the air, try as hard as you can to predict where it will explode.

2. Begin the exposure shortly before you predict the explosion. Start OUT OF FOCUS

3. When the fireworks explode, quickly refocus your lens throughout the explosion until you reach the tack-sharp focal point, where the fireworks will be in focus.

4. Once the perfect focus is achieved, END THE EXPOSURE by releasing the shutter button (bulb mode)

You will quickly see how the out-of-focus light refocuses and converges to a small point… creating floating sea creatures in the sky!

By varying the aperture (f-stop) size, the width of the tentacles changes. If you use a 7.1 aperture, the out of focus light will be thin and sharper, and as it converges the tentacles will be long and thin. If you use an aperture like 2.8, the tentacles are thick and very large, creating and entirely different feel to the image.

Using the neutral density filter is crucial as trying to capture something as bright as fireworks with a bright f-stop (like 2.8) results in overexposure where the true colour content of the fireworks gets dissolved into white.

Here are some examples & settings used for the images.