This Friday I decided last minute to shoot fireworks in Lambertville, NJ. For those that don’t know, Lambertville is right on the Delaware River bordering Pennsylvania. There is an awesome bridge that crosses the river and Pennsylvania border into New Hope, PA. The two towns co-sponsor a fireworks show every year. This year I went to Lambertville and got there about 8 PM to shoot sunset and then the fireworks.
I found a nice spot right by the river which has really easy access. The view was perfect for sunset shooting across the river. I setup my Nikon D850 with a 4 second interval in manual mode. I started off at f/10 and ISO 64 and ramped my settings during the video. The 4 second interval worked out perfect to try and keep my shutter speed around 1 second. The sky absolutely lit up this evening with cotton candy colors and an epic scene up and down the river.
The sunset was so great that I decided to even scramble and set up my phone last minute on a rock to take shots in the opposite direction of the bridge. I also used a 4 second interval on the phone in manual mode. I’ll have to do a video next time on shooting timelapses with a phone since they ca turn out really great!
In the end the timelapse video of the bridge turned out great, I am really happy that I chose a 4 second interval since the sky lasts longer in the video. My recommendation is to shoot as many shots as possible if it looks like the sunset will be nice!
At about 915 PM I stopped shooting the sunset and turned my attention to the barge up the river where the fireworks were going to go off. I had my Tamron 15-30 mm f/2.8 lens so I could hopefully capture the entire show. Fireworks are tough to shoot in my opinion for video since they have a variety of intervals of firing and light patterns. I tried a 1 second interval so I had to set my aperture to f/2,8 and ISO 3200. My shutter speed was at 0.2 seconds. The video turned out pretty cool but perhaps even a faster shutter speed might be better next time!
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions!
Brian