How I Photographed New Year’s Eve Fireworks with the OM System OM-1

I spent New Year’s Eve at an outdoor party. When the fireworks started, I pointed my camera up and kept the surroundings out of the frame. What drew me in was the detail inside each burst. There were pink sparks with fine gold tails, little flashes between the bigger explosions and clouds of smoke that turned blue or violet for a moment. Once I started looking for those details, there were two pictures I wanted to make. One put me right in the middle of the sparks. The other gave the fireworks room to spread.

The camera and settings I used

I used my OM System OM-1 (Amazon affiliate link) with a telephoto zoom. I shot in manual exposure mode at 1/80 sec and f/14 throughout this set. The camera recorded ISO 25,600 for eight frames. The last frame below is the exception. With the shutter speed and aperture staying put, the most visible change across the series came from how much of the sky I included.

Getting close at 400mm

I started at 400mm on the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 100–400mm f/5–6.3 IS (Amazon affiliate link). At that focal length, the angle of view is roughly equivalent to 800mm on full frame. That narrow view is what makes the fireworks on the cover feel so close. I was happy to let some trails run off the edges. The point of those frames was to see the little changes in colour and the way the sparks broke apart.

Even in a short exposure, fireworks move fast enough to draw visible lines. In the orange frame below, you can see a bright tip and a spray of smaller sparks behind it. That mix of detail and movement is what I like about this exposure time. If you’re experimenting with the same effect, my guide to shutter speed explains how to choose between shorter marks and longer trails.

Zooming back to 100mm

I pulled back to 100mm, about a 200mm full-frame equivalent. That’s still a telephoto view, but it gave me much more space to work with. In the gold frame below, you can see several bursts and the curving trails between them. At the longer end of the zoom, I was looking at individual sparks. Here, I could see how the whole display was taking shape.

The portrait frames gave me another way to use that space. I could leave darkness above a rising burst and still keep the smoke and smaller flashes below. In the frame here, I like the distance between the red sparks up top and the green light to the right.

A square crop makes a useful comparison. It brings the bursts closer together on the page and keeps the eye on the middle. If you’re still finding the framing during a display, leave yourself a little extra space when you take the shot. You can decide how much of it to keep later.

I also kept one of the busier portraits. The smoke is doing something useful here. A violet patch separates the gold sparks on the left from the orange burst on the right. If I lift the whole sky in the edit, those colours have less room to stand out. My night photography settings guide has more on exposing for bright lights against a dark background.

A quieter frame at the end

I wanted to finish the set with a little more breathing room. The last frame was made at ISO 20,000, about a third of a stop lower. It looks darker than the brighter portrait above. The lower ISO makes a modest difference to brightness when the light and processing are the same. Here, the smaller burst and extra dark space also change the feel of the picture. The trails are still visible because the exposure time stayed the same.

This is one way to photograph fireworks. I liked how the short exposure kept the little sparks distinct, and that’s the look I wanted to share. I’ve included the settings so you can see what this approach gives you and decide whether it suits the kind of photographs you want to make.

If you try a similar short exposure, check the first few frames for focus and blown highlights. I’d use a distant light to check focus, then switch to manual focus and recheck after zooming. If you want longer ribbons, a tripod gives you the option to try a slower shutter without moving the camera.

What I’d try again is keeping the exposure time steady and changing the framing first. It makes the difference between a tight detail and a quieter view easy to see. At the next display, give yourself a few frames to do both.