Help with Fireworks

[Donutboy]

Hi Everyone,
Im off out this week to a gig firwork display and i wanna take some cool pics. The problem is that im not used to shooting at night and im still new to photograghy. Can anyone out there give me some advice pls. Im using a Canon350d. Cheers.

 

[Meysha]

Sweet. Fireworks are heaps of fun to take photos of.

Get to the scene early so you're not bustling with other people to get a good view. Set up your tripod in the general direction of the fireworks.
I suggest that you slightly zoom out and do any cropping in the post process stage. If you zoom in to close you may accidentally cut off parts of the fire work.

Set the camera to bulb mode. Use a remote if you can to avoid camera shakiness.

Experiment with opening the shutter at different times in the firework actually going up and then exploding. That way you can get flowers with stems,,, or just the flower.

For my firework shots I left the shutter open for between 1 and 2 seconds depending on how much activity there was for each frame. ISO 100 (because fireworks are actually pretty bright), and manually focused

You will just have to experiment with a couple of bulb shots to get a feel for the right exposure length.

EDIT:
oh and I also suggest shooting in RAW because you are going to have to do a fair bit of editing to make them nice.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/Meysha/Festival Cairns/IMG_3523edited.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/Meysha/Festival Cairns/IMG_3526edited.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/Meysha/Festival Cairns/IMG_3551edited.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/Meysha/Festival Cairns/IMG_3558edited.jpg