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Features

Remember: When Photographing Fireworks, It Can Be Easier To Shoot Wide

Chris Gampat
No Comments
06/30/2017
2 Mins read
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We know that within the next few days both America and Canada will be celebrating their Independence days. Much of the festivities are celebrated with the lighting of fireworks. They’re big, they’re beautiful and they’re very colorful. But for many, they can be incredibly difficult to shoot. Part of this inherent difficulty comes with the fact that fireworks are so far away and are best experienced through a slow shutter speed. If you’ve got a tripod, then you don’t need to worry about this all that much–same applies to those of you with cameras that have insane image stabilization like the Olympus OMD EM1 Mk II. But if you’re handholding your camera and lens, then you’ll need to find a way to stabilize your camera.

In most situations, shooter with a wide angle lens could be easier. Why? The reciprocal rule of shutter speeds states that in order to get an image that is devoid of camera shake, you’ll need to shoot at the reciprocal or your lens’ field of view. So at 15mm wide angle lens on a full frame camera will make sense at 1/15th of a second. But on an APS-C cropped sensor camera, a 35mm f1.4 lens will make the most sense being shot at 1/50th. Slow shutter speeds really work at times like this.

Of course, this means that you’ll need to get closer to the action or at least do some extra time scouting and figuring out which location could be best for you. But beyond that, you’re going to have to find probably two more. Why? Because otherwise you’re shooting the same vista and angle over and over again. That gets boring unless you plan on seriously culling down your photos.

Happy shooting this coming weekend and Happy Independance Day to all our readers in these areas!

America camera Canada fireworks slow shutter speeds wide angle lens
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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