5 tips for making perfect fireworks photos with your iPhone

Celebrate the spectacular fireworks photos festival with New Year’s Eve? With these 5 tips, you can make better photos and videos with your iPhone.

Fireworks photos make iPhone

There is a good chance that in a few days you will be in 2019 with your iPhone in pants or jacket pocket. Your phone usually makes fine fireworks photos on automatic mode, but the iPhone camera is capable of more. We help you with 5 tips to shoot even more beautiful fireworks pictures.

1. Pay attention to where you stand

Your location determines a large part of your photo, especially if you are photographing fireworks. Do you want to make a picture of a decorative arrow that explodes in the air? Then move a bit further away so that your camera has a larger part of the sky in the picture. After all, you want to prevent the arrow from splitting just outside the image. Keeping distance is also safer and you can capture a part of the environment, for example, a beautiful building.

Also, keep in mind the wind direction. When lighting fireworks, a lot of smoke is released and when you are full of wind, both you and your iPhone camera see nothing more.

2. Use the burst mode

With the burst mode on your iPhone, the camera takes a lot of photos in a short time. Handy if you want to capture an exploding arrow or a flapping mat but do not want to gamble on one photo. You activate the burst mode by holding down the shutter button in the camera app and releasing it after a few seconds. In the Photos app, you can view the snaps and remove them if necessary.

If you want to make better burst pictures, it is best to use a tripod.

3. Experiment with the shutter speed

To make good photos as quickly as possible, your iPhone automatically regulates many camera settings. Determining the correct shutter speed is one of them. The shutter speed is the time in which your camera receives light to take the photo.

A longer shutter speed gives your iPhone more time to capture light and that results in a different kind of photos. A so-called light trace is created. On the photo below you see a light trail of moving cars.

For a cool light trail of (exploding) fireworks, set the shutter speed between 1 / 8s and 1 / 2s. Here you can use the standard camera app of the iPhone or an alternative app such as Camera + 2.

4. Adjust the ISO value

The ISO value is also determined automatically by the camera app of your iPhone. ISO refers to how much light your camera receives. The higher the ISO value, the more light is collected. More light usually means a better picture, but with a higher ISO value, more noise is also involved.

Photographing fireworks (bright flashes in a dark situation) is an excellent opportunity to experiment with ISO values. For example, set the value to 200 or 400.

The standard camera app of the iPhone is somewhat limited in adjusting the ISO. If you want to go wild with ISO, it is best to install an alternative camera app such as Halide Camera.

5. Shoot a slow-motion video

Have you shot some nice photos or are you more of a videographer? With your iPhone, you can also record beautiful fireworks videos, for example via slow-motion mode. The camera records a regular video that is played back later in a delayed way. An exploding flare or a thousand-clapper is even more spectacular.

You can find the slow-motion film mode on the iPhone 5S and newer. Open the camera app, scroll through the different modes and choose Slow Motion. Via the Photos app, you can play slow-motion videos and possibly edit which part of the movie should be played slowly.