Tag Archives: fireworks

Happy New Year 2014!

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New Year's Eve 2014 Fireworks at KLCC

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f22, 10.56 sec (for pic above).

Fireworks Photography Tip 1: Juxtapose the fireworks against a landmark or skyline. A shot of fireworks alone in the sky, however nice, doesn’t say much. It could have been photographed in any city.

Fireworks Photography Tip 2: Use a speed slower than 2 seconds to maximise the flowing effect of the burst and to better capture the sparkle. It means you will need a tripod.

For users of recent Olympus cameras, just set it to Live Time in Bulb mode and watch the exposure develop on the LCD screen. Stop when you feel it is nice enough. This takes the guesswork out of shooting blind in B manual mode.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f22, 6.46 sec (for pic below).

Tips On Shooting Fireworks Photos Like A Pro

Fireworks Photography Tip 3: Get your act together as fast as possible. The view gets progressively smoky after the first or second minute. After that, lingering smoke usually gets too heavy and may obscure the landmark or the fireworks itself. The smoke will also create a colour cast.

And one most important tip: Once you get your settings correct, just fire away but alternately look at the sky. Take in the beauty with your naked eyes directly, not by viewing through a viewfinder or LCD throughout. In this case, I had no choice but to look up. I was so near the epicentre that chunks of burning sulphur and hot ash were landing few inches away.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f16, 3.58 sec (for pic below).

How To Photograph Fireworks

Happy Malaysia Day!

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It’s Malaysia Day Eve. Go shoot some fireworks at the ongoing Putrajaya International Fireworks Competition at midnight.

Photography Tip: Use a a relatively long exposure to capture the long and flowing light trails. Also, as I always emphasise, find a landmark to juxtapose, if practical. Fireworks are attractive by itself, so there is the temptation to point up and isolate the bursts alone. It is nice but meaningless when you look at it years later. A black sky is the same, anywhere in the world. So go early, find ‘ground zero’ and scout around for a view that includes an interesting background. It won’t be easy at Putrajaya as there are few buildings around the launch site. If you can’t find a suitable background, try to include the lake and the reflections off the water.

Long exposures are easy with the OM-D’s Live Time and Live Bulb mode. Just press the shutter and watch the exposure build up on the LCD screen in real time. Stop when you see a perfect exposure. It was raining last night when I photographed this display from Team China. My assistant held an umbrella while I wiped the lens after each shot when the camera processed and wrote the file.

Happy 50th Malaysia Day on September 16th.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f18, 4.58 sec.

Putrajaya International Fireworks Competition

The Big Bang

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What is a Malaysian flower show without fireworks? After all, fireworks in Malay is ‘bunga api’ or fire flower. In Cantonese, it is ‘yin fah’ or smoke flower.

A flotilla of illuminated boats gathered on the lake at Floria Putrajaya 2013 as spectacular fireworks were set off. As with all major fireworks displays, there is one spectacular big bang at the end. This was when I decided to use a somewhat risky and nervy technique.

An exposure duration of 1/2 to 1 second is normally enough to blur the light trails of the fireworks nicely. I decided to go for a long 10-second exposure to capture the multiple bursts in a single shot. This is tough because with such a long exposures, the camera will trigger its dark-frame subtraction processing. You can turn it off but sensor thermal noise may ruin the image instead.

With it enabled, you effectively more than doubled the exposure time. It means standing around helpless for 30 seconds or more as the camera captures, processes and writes the image to the storage card. It is like waiting for a lifetime during a fireworks display.

That is OK but at a crowded place, a kid may grab one of your tripod legs in excitement or a camwhore might fire a flash ruining your shot. If that is not enough, the sky can also get very smoky towards the end of the display. If it at the end of it something screws up, the show will be probably be over. There is no second chance.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f16, 10 sec.

The Big Bang