5 Tips for Taking Better Fireworks Photos with iPhone
Heading out to watch a fireworks show (it is the 4th of July you know) and plan to use your iPhone as your primary camera? Be sure to use these five tricks for taking the best possible fireworks pictures with your iPhone… it’s not quite a DSLR, but with some proper technique you can still capture great firework images with the iPhone.
1: Enable HDR & Keep Original Version
HDR takes multiple photos at different exposures, then automatically combines them together into a single image using software. For shooting something like fireworks, HDR can be particularly advantageous because the different exposure images often capture light-trails and other details that a single image may not capture.
Turning HDR on is easy, once you’re in the Camera app just tap on the “HDR Off” button until it’s highlighted in yellow and says “HDR On”.
You’ll also want to keep the original picture because it lets you determine which is the best image to keep. If the HDR version is crummy, ditch it and keep the original, or vice versa. If you turned that feature off, just turn it back on again: Settings > Photos & Camera > Keep Normal Photo
2: Use Exposure Lock for Optimal Lighting
Once you get a picture or two that you’re happy with, use Exposure Lock to lock in the exposure details so that your future fireworks shots will come out just as good.
Exposure Lock is super easy to enable, just tap and hold on the camera screen in the region where you want to lock the exposure and lighting to. You’ll know it’s on when “AE/AF LOCK” appears at the top of the Camera screen in yellow.
Using Exposure Lock also locks the focus, which for shooting distant objects doesn’t matter quite as much, but as of now there’s no way to lock exposure separately from focus.
3: Take Many Pictures & Shoot Often
Shooting often is the dirty secret of most professional digital photographers, they make take 100 pictures and only keep a handful that turned out particularly great. You can apply that same theory to your iPhone shots when capturing tricky lighting situations like fireworks. There’s not much to this, so just take a lot of pictures with HDR, and later in the evening when the firework show is over you can go through and cull the images you don’t want anymore.
4: Try Burst Mode
iPhone Burst Mode takes many photos in rapid succession, which is great for moving objects. Sometimes this can work well with fireworks too, so try it out. It’s easy to use, just hold down the Camera button to shoot photos in bursts. This is sort of a variation of the above trick, which is to shoot a lot of pictures. You’ll want to
Optional: Try Slow Shutter Cam
SlowShutterCam is a third party app that allows you to take light trail and motion blur images by leaving the iPhone lens ‘open’ like a traditional camera. Slow Shutter Cam works surprisingly well, but for best results you’ll want to keep the iPhone very still, either using a tripod (yes they make mini-tripods for the iPhone) or by improvising and leaning the iPhone against an object like a picnic table or an upside down hotdog bun.
Whatever you use and whatever you try, have fun out there! Enjoy the fireworks!
Bonus Tips!
- Run out of storage in the middle of the show? Use this workaround to keep shooting photos even when the Camera tells you the iPhone doesn’t have enough storage
- Join your burst mode photos together into animated GIFS, right on your iPhone if you capture a great sequence of a bursting firework display
- Shooting with an iPad instead? Access the iPad camera from the lock screen with Siri
(Firework pictures shown here are modified versions of imagery found on Wikipedia, used and modified under their respective CC licensing. Original pictures are located here and here)
Paul, your tips are great. Thank you!
Now here’s one for you.
The next time someone posts an ugly, divisive rant, just delete it. Keep the rest of us from getting ulcers instead of just enjoying what you write plus helpful comments from others.
Thanks for the kind words FrequentReader, and that’s great advice!
Great tips, just in time. BTW, I just shot the Capital Fourth fireworks on my TV using my Iphone 5c using your HDR and other tips and some of them are first rate … almost like being there! Thanks!
My fireworks videos on my 6+ are awful… about 40% accurate… most of the detail and colors are not true. Doug aaaspark@yahoo.com
Great tips. Even tho I am American I have taken fireworks photos all over the world. Two fav shows: Berlin New Years Eve and Rhinefalls in Switzerland on their version of 4th of July –that’s sort of how our friends their explained it. Happy 4th of July for everyone all over the world esp if u just watched Will Smith in Independence Day!!!!
Jealous Much?
BTW, if you need something to proper up your phone (ie, the round edges on the iPhone 6 don’t support it standing upright or on its side) You can use the wall adapter with the prongs pointing up and place your phone on it’s side or up and down between them.
… prop* up…
Good tip.
Very useful – if not for tomorrow in the UK, the Edinburgh festival is combining next month, which has great fireworks every night all through August.
Thanks!
Kevin,
Clearly you are jealous of me. Stop trying to ruin my birthday.
Why this dumb people always leave bad comments.. just be thankful with the tips thats it…
Kevin- why don’t u leave the rambling out of your post. I really don’t care whether the rest of the world cares about our holiday or not. I guess it was just too hard for u to simply say “thanks for the tips”. Moron!
Paul- great tips, thank you!
I appreciate these tips on taking photos of fireworks with an iPhone. Ignore Kevin
Thank you for the tips, in my experience, photographing fireworks is tricky.
How about you leave the US centric rambling out of your post for god’s sake? The rest of the world don’t give a fat rats about July 4th. Just give us the facts please.
The tips apply to taking pictures of any fireworks with the iPhone, today just happens to be an occasion to post about it since there are a lot of readers watching a firework show this evening. Point is taken, but this is certainly not intended to be US-centric, as you can see one of the photos is of a firework show behind the Eiffel Tower in France.
Nicely said Paul!
Idiot ….
Shut up
When the towel heads come to your country to cut your head off the USA will let them. Don’t come crying to the U.S. for military support.
this racist idiot does not speak for all of us Americans.