Shooting fireworks at night with Braun Nizo 801 Super 8 Camera

[Maggie Kruger]

Hey fellow photographers!

A pretty burning question that I have for you guys...after reading the manual for Braun Nizo 801 I am still unsure as to how I can sufficiently capture some fireworks I am going to be shooting at night this week. I recently purchased a Braun Nizo 801 Super 8 and have never used it before...I put in a Kodak Vision3 500t canister and am hoping for the best, however I was wondering what the best way to capture the fireworks would be...I plan on getting as close as I can to absorb as much light from them as possible (don't worry I am approaching this with utmost safety in mind!) and don't think I should leave the exposure on "automatic"...should I turn the dial all the way counter clockwise? So confused. Here is another post off of this forum asking a similar question and providing the relevant excerpt from the manual. I feel a bit stupid because I am unable to understand it:

http://www.cinematog...showtopic=57374

Many thanks for ANY advice!!!

[David Cunningham]

I would just set to manual exposure and open wide open. The latitude of 500T should be sufficient to get good results. Do not use an 85 filter.

[Mike Bao]

Yeah,500T is close to what eye actually sees. I am pretty sure you will be able to expose properly. You can always gain exposure by shooting less FPS.

[David Cunningham]

Could be done but 24fps looks fine on fireworks at 500 Asa. Motion blur on the first burst is bad enough at 24 FPS. I definitely wouldn't go slower than 18.

[Alessandro Machi]

There is a danger when being wide open at night of having a soft image, I suppose you would be wide angle and focus to infinity?

 

Probably want your camera tripod mounted, assuming your tripod is a decent one with ease of pan and tilting at a moment's notice.

 

Just for kicks, you should see if it is possible to adjust your f-stop to a 2.0 2.8 split for a short portion of the fireworks just to see if the picture looks sharper without too much loss of image. If you are open to treating this as an experiment, I would even go to f 2.8 and even 2.8 / 4 split.

 

18 frames per second versus 24 will get you an extra 1/3 of a stop of sensitivity. I forget how the manual shutter works on the camera, probably want to keep it as slow as possible to gain additional exposure time per frame.