Firework season is upon is upon us! This is great time to practice shooting fireworks and to see what you like best. The best part is, organizations will often have fireworks displays a few nights in a row leading up to the Fourth of July. This gives you multiple opportunities to try out different vantage points, lenses, shutter speeds, and compositions. Here are a few things to keep in mind when preparing to shoot fireworks this season.
 

Equipment: Tripod, cable release, camera/lens
 

• A tripod is a requirement for shooting fireworks because you will be using longer shutter speeds, such as 2 seconds, and you cannot successfully hand hold a camera for this long without movement. A tripod will help ensure tack sharp images.
   
• A cable release is required for the same reason. If you are pressing the shutter on the body of the camera, you will cause movement. You can procure a wired release relatively inexpensively too, so they are worth purchasing.
   
• The lens you choose depends on what you are going for. Do you want tight shots of the fireworks or a wide angle that includes the surroundings? For tight shots, you might want to use a lens between 100-200 mm. A zoom is great because you can quickly experiment with different focal lengths. For shots that include the surrounding landscape, you will want something wider, like 16mm. Again a wide angle zoom is really helpful for quickly tweaking what focal length will work best given your circumstances.
   

Settings: Raw vs. JPEG, ISO, F-stop, Shutter speed
 

• Always shoot in RAW mode if you can. The quality is better, and there is more data available if you need to make post processing adjustments.
   
• Stick to a lower ISO, such as 100-200. This reduce noise on images.
   
• F-Stop, which controls depth of field, does not have to be really small (like 22). You can star with F8 or F11 and tweak as you see fit. Chances are, one of these settings will work just fine throughout the entire show.
   
• Your shutter speed selection will also depend on what you are going for. If you want quick bursts with small trails, try 1 second. If you want multiple bursts and longer trails, try 3 or more seconds. Since you will get many opportunities throughout the show, you can quickly see what you like best.

  
   

Focusing
 

• I usually wait for the first firework to go off, focus manually, then leave it alone for the rest of the show. I've found the plane on which the fireworks are displayed doesn't vary much. The smaller your F-stop is (the larger the number is), the more likely the fireworks will all be in focus even if they are at varying distances from your lens.

  
   

Composition
 

• This was mentioned briefly under the lens recommendations. If you are taking pictures in a mall parking lot, you probably aren't going to be too interested in getting the surrounding environment so tight shots might work best. However, if you are in a park, you might want to include the landscape and audience. If you are at an iconic location like San Francisco, you might want to include the skyline and reflection.

  
   

Post processing
 

• Post processing should be pretty straight forward with fireworks. You may want to adjust the contrast and saturation but unless you have a ton of smoke in your image, processing should be the easiest part of this venture. If you are really feeling creative, you can change the look by playing with some of the filters in Photoshop.