Want to capture the spectacular New Year’s Eve fireworks festively? These five tips will help you take better photos and videos with your iPhone.
Take fireworks photos iPhone
There is a good chance that you will herald 2020 with your iPhone in your trouser or jacket pocket. Your phone usually takes excellent fireworks photos in automatic mode, but the iPhone camera is capable of more. We help you with these tips to shoot even more beautiful fireworks pictures.
1. Pay attention to where you stand
Your location largely determines your photo, especially if you photograph fireworks. Do you want to take a picture of an ornamental arrow that explodes in mid-air? Then move a little further away so that your camera has a larger part of the sky in view. After all, you want to prevent the arrow from bursting just outside the frame. Keeping your distance is also safer and you can capture a part of the environment, for example a beautiful building.
Also take the wind direction into account. When fireworks are set off a lot of smoke is released and when you are in full wind, neither you nor your iPhone camera can see anything anymore.
2. Use 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 crashing mat but don’t want to gamble on one photo. You activate 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 snapshots and delete them if necessary. If you want to make even better burst pictures, it is best to use a tripod.
3. Experiment with the shutter speed
To take good photos as quickly as possible, your iPhone automatically controls many camera settings. Determining the correct shutter speed is one of them. The shutter speed is the time during which your camera receives light to take the photo.
A slower shutter speed gives your iPhone more time to catch light, resulting in a different kind of photos. A so-called light trail is created. The photo below shows a light trail of moving cars.
For a cool trail of (exploding) fireworks, set the shutter speed between 1 / 8s and 1 / 2s. You can use the standard camera app of the iPhone for this or an alternative app such as Camera + 2.
4. Adjust the ISO value
The ISO value is also automatically determined 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 photo, but a higher ISO value also means more noise.
Photographing fireworks (bright flashes of light in a dark situation) is an excellent opportunity to experiment with ISO values. For example, set the value to 200 or 400.
The iPhone’s default camera app is a bit more limited when it comes to adjusting the ISO. If you want to go all out with ISO, it is best to use an alternative camera app like Halide Camera to install.
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 the slow motion mode. The camera records a regular video that is later played in slow motion. An exploding rocket or thousand-thunder comes across even more spectacular.
Open the camera app, scroll through the different modes and choose Slow Motion. Via the Photos app you can play slow motion videos and if necessary edit which part of the video should be played slowly.