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How to shoot Fireworks?

N

Norbert Niederacher

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Hi,

I am going to shoot the fireworks in my hometown at Silvester. They are shooting from the Mountains...
Epic with Canon Glas. Any tips or advise?

Thanks
Norbert
 
i think overcranks would be really cool, but you might wanna run hdrx just to watch your back on the exposure... if theres a full moon that might help...
 
Norbert Niederacher said:
Hi,

I am going to shoot the fireworks in my hometown at Silvester. They are shooting from the Mountains...
Epic with Canon Glas. Any tips or advise?

Thanks
Norbert
Click to expand...

I would:
1. Make a proper blackshade.
2. Shoot with fast fixed/prime lenses.
3. Open up as much as you can.
4. If you shoot from a tripod you might as well change your shutter closer to 360.
5. Preferably use two cameras one with a bit wider lens covering most of it and one that aims for closeups and cutaways. As you will not get the chance to do retakes two cameras lets you cover the whole thing in a much better way where one holds a master frame and the other can try to frame the goodies a bit closer... you can not have to many cameras... fro sure.


I would use f1.2 or 1.4 canon lenses, and keep an eye on the goal posts.. But I do not think you will overexpose, and the more exposure you can get in your lowlight the better it will look. If you have mist or a lot of snow and such and you get over exposure. I would actually rather up the frame rate a bit then closing down on the lens. Firework looks more majestic in high FPS but I would put light in priority before slomo. Also if you go for the 360 shutter you need to look out for light flicker from streetlights and such. As those lamps usually flickers one or 2 times per frame in 24/25p so the motion blur on passing people and cars can then be hurting a bit, still / again I would put the light in priority.

The nicest thing with shooting fireworks is usually to capture not only the fireworks them selfs but the soft and fast moving light they cast on their surrounding, especially in snow.

Here is a screen dump form a "info film" we made where we shot with quite a fast moving POV camera without any thing else than the existing lights on the locations.

And here is a link to the actual film in the end by you find the sodium shots from about a minute and a half into the film. You can see the double exposure from the sodium streetlights on freeze frames, but when paying it's fine I think and still our camera is moving quite a bit with fast pans etc. And this issue would not happen to the actually fireworks as they do not have the flickering only the street lit stuff:

http://www.syndicate.se/Files/~usr/visita/VISITA_EDIT_TORS06dec-H264 1024x576.mov


In post I guess you would have to lift the iso to about 1500 or such wich looks fine I think. But if you want to go all out you should try to get hold of a Leica noctilux then you could double the frame rate and still have more light than most other lenses. A nice big firework thingy and such setup would probably pay it self off quite quickly if you turn to the stockshot market...
 

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Hallo,

Es wäre natürlich toll, eine zweite Epic im Einsatz zu haben. Das Bergsilvester in Innsbruck ist wahrscheinlich noch nie in 5K gefilmt worden.
Es ist aber ein Privatjob. Leider habe ich dafür keinen Auftrag...

Grüße aus Innsbruck

Norbert Jalitsch said:
hi norbert, maybe i´m near innsbruck for silvester i could come and help you out in bringing a second epic and additional manpower with me :-)
cheers
Click to expand...
 
i think this is a good candidate for hdr-x with a fast prime, unless you're only interested in the sky, and then you may want to play around with slow-mo, so you may still want a fast prime for that.

50mm @ f2

attachment.php
 
Norbert Niederacher said:
Hallo,

Es wäre natürlich toll, eine zweite Epic im Einsatz zu haben. Das Bergsilvester in Innsbruck ist wahrscheinlich noch nie in 5K gefilmt worden.
Es ist aber ein Privatjob. Leider habe ich dafür keinen Auftrag...

Grüße aus Innsbruck
Click to expand...

norbert, genau so hab ich mir das vorgestellt :-)
lets go out and shoot something :-)
i would bring my leica glasses with me, and the rpz 18-85 as well. perfect to shoot some timelapses and the fireworx too :-)
also, sollte jetzt nicht irgend ein grosser job daherkommen - und damit rechne ich eher nicht mehr, bin ich da gerne mit dabei !

bleiben wir diesbezüglich in kontakt, 0650 7678776 oder norbert.jalitsch@gmx.at

lg, norbert jalitsch
 
norbert, deine inbox scheint voll zu sein :-)
zimmer ist gebucht (arthotel binders), ich werde am 31. ab mittags mit freundin und equipment in innsbruck sein und freu mich schon. bitte kontaktiere mich kurz telefonisch...
lgnj
 
Hi again,

Thanks for your input. I will try my best.
I was busy the last days because I am covering the 4-Hill-Tournament. Skijumpers are human rockets :-)

Wish you a happy new year!
Norbert
 
Hi again,

It is nothing special, just some shots from the Fireworks in Innsbruck. They didn't shoot a lot of rockets in the mountains. Mostly in town.
Thanks to Norbert Jalitsch. He helped me with a 2nd Epic.

https://vimeo.com/56820485
 
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