Today let’s look at the black art of night photography – pun intended. We’ll explore the fireworks and sunset scene modes.
Fireworks scene mode is pretty self explanatory. You take photos of fireworks. Your camera will automatically set the focus at infinity because the fireworks are far away. It will also use a super slow shutter speed to let in the most light. This means you should use a tripod if at all possible.
Sunset scene mode will boost the color saturation. Both modes will turn off the flash as well.
So you went on your Labor Day camping trip. You wanted to take a photo of the beautiful camp fire in the fire pit.
You grabbed your camera on auto mode, snapped the shutter, and here’s what you got:
auto mode makes for a boring camp fire
Well, you captured a photo of the camp fire, but that’s a boring photo if I ever saw one. The camera used a super quick shutter speed of 10/80 seconds. Quick enough to be in focus, but boring.
Let’s try that again using fireworks scene mode.
cool effects
That looks pretty cool. The shutter speed was so slow that the sparks look almost like silly string coming out of the fire. But, I don’t remember the hottest part of the fire being pink!
It’s a bit out of focus because the shutter speed was slowed down to 10/20 seconds. For all you math whizzes, that is exactly equal to 1/2 second.
The one thing I do like about the photo is that it looks like a fire pit just floating in a sea of darkness, which is pretty much what it actually looked like.
Let’s try that again with sunset scene mode.
now there's a fire!
Can you feel the warmth? Can you see the smoldering embers? Everything is in focus using the sunset scene mode. That’s because the shutter speed was sped up to 10/34 seconds. Not fast, but fast enough to be in focus.
The color still seems a bit pink, but better. That can always be fixed with some tweaks in Photoshop if desired.
These scene modes are really getting to be a lot of fun. What other creative uses can you find for fireworks and sunset scene modes?
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