Fireworks

[aee]

Where would you start with your settings on a bridge camera to begin photographing fireworks. I only starting out taking pictures up till now The camera has been on auto for everything. Getting my head around the setting slowly but need guidance please

[Shadowman]

What camera model do you have and does it have a preset for fireworks? That's usually the place to start and if it doesn't fit your needs then look into manual settings.

[aee]

Its a Sony HX300 . It does have an auto settings I will use it as a guide ta. Its just the the auto scene setting are not very good

[Shadowman]

Its a Sony HX300 . It does have an auto settings I will use it as a guide ta. Its just the the auto scene setting are not very good

Auto settings tend to expose to the right which depending on the light will use a very slow shutter speed. Also, your camera has a digital zoom feature (in order to get 50X) which tends to degrade the quality of images. Try to stay within the optical zoom settings if you can.

[Geoff F]

Will you be shooting with a tripod or handheld?

As John mentioned, most firework settings will give too long a shutter speed for hand held shooting.

I have overcome the hand held problem by using shutter priority and setting as slow as you can manage; which will probably be around 1/40. That is much faster than normally recommended for fireworks. Some Iso adjustment will be necessary. Maybe try Iso 400 to 800. It varies with the actual scene and camera.

You won't get those long feathery looking fireworks although for me the result is often more natural and similar to what you actually view with your eye. Usually better than having well blurred images which result from camera movement.

If you have software which supports layers it is possible to combine several shots into one image but you may have to vary the layer blend mode.