> I have this thing about fireworks. I keep trying to get a good photo of them and it's impossible. You can see my best-ever fireworks photo on my web page. It was taken at the enormous New Year's display, which filled the entire *sky* - there are actually two or three tiny little spots showing up, if you look really closely, which are either fireworks or a bit of dust on the film, or maybe a street light in the distance.
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> On the night after the last America's Cup race, I was taking photos from a balcony right in front of the fireworks. It was probably the best viewpoint in the entire city. Everybody's photos except mine came out.
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> This probably has to do with film speeds or lighting or something like that; I know nothing about photography. Does anyone know if there's a simple answer?
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> Brunnen-"apart from getting someone else to take the pictures, I mean"G

I don't really know that much about shooting fireworks, but my Dave does, for some reason. (I've only used either really slow-speed colour film like K64 and 100, or really high-speed film like Polaroid 3200 B&W (which is fast enough to take a shot of a meteorite impacting on the moon...on a moonless night :-) So anyway, here are some tips for doing fireworks. I checked them against Kodak's technical bulletin at
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/ac42/ac42.shtml

· #1: You need a manual camera, because shooting fireworks requires long exposures. Try a 35mm manual SLR.

· #2: Use a tripod and a cable shutter release to hold everything steady. (I know that might be tricky if you're on a boat...)

· #3: Buy a low-speed film ranging from ISO 50 to 100. Set the camera's shutter speed to 'B' (BULB). Set the f/stop on the aperture to the following:
ISO 50 film . . . . . f/5.6 or f/8
ISO 64 film . . . . . f/5.6 or f/8
ISO 100 film . . . . . f/8 or f/11
Basically, use the square root of the film speed as the aperture.

· #4: Focus the camera to Infinity. When the first burst occurs, focus on that one and use the same setting throughout.

· #5: To get a single bloom, open the shutter and expose the film for 5-10 seconds. For multiple bursts, expose for 15-40 seconds. Apparently, to get really creative, it's possible to compose a scene with multiple exposures and pleasing colour combinations: cover the lens with a black cardboard disk or cloth between bursts (until you reach the full time of your exposure).

If you can't use a tripod, good old Kodak recommends a high-speed film in your manual camera: "you won't be able to make a sharp time exposure. However, you can get successful results with a handheld camera at 1/30 second at f/5.6 on Kodak Gold Max 800 film, Kodak Royal Gold 1000 film for color prints or Kodak T-Max P3200 professional film for black-and-white prints. Time your exposures with the fireworks bursts. This technique works best during the finale when there are many bursts going off at the same time."

There's bad news if you have an automatic-only camera. Automatic's slowest shutter speed is usually 1/15 second, which is too fast for taking fireworks. Also, the light meter sees mainly dark sky in the background and will end up overexposing the film.

Hoping something out of this works out for you. :-)