If you’re taking pictures of Fireworks, setting up the camera is pretty easy. There are two things you can do.

One, you can use the scene mode. Just go ahead and press the Function button here to access the Function menu. And normally, I use manual but in this case press the left or right navigation button to access the Scene mode here.

Now, in my case right now it’s set to Kids and Pets. Go ahead, you’ll see here it says Display, just press the Display button to access many other scenes one of which being the Firework Scene mode. Just scroll all the way over until you get to fireworks and you can see everything turns completely white because the Firework Scene is going to choose a two seconds shutter speed so this is great for fireworks but not great if you’re indoors. Press Display to exit the Scene mode and you can go ahead and press the Function button to escape the Function menu.

Now, you’ll notice in the Firework Scene mode, my ISO is set to Automatic. I cannot change that. And my Flash is forced off, I can’t change that either and I don’t want to. And everything is pretty much set up for me. You’re definitely going to want to use a tripod. Put a tripod here in the tripod mount and set that up. Now, what you’re going to want to do is press the Shutter button halfway in order to focus on the fireworks and hold that button pressed halfway until the fireworks are the way you want them to be for the picture. So, until you just get an explosion or something like that. Press the shutter button the rest of the way.

Now, you’re going to have to hold the camera very, very steady. Because it’s a two second shutter, you don’t want to move the camera at all and you can’t release the camera really because then it’ll shake a little bit so you want to press the Shutter button halfway focus and then press it to the rest of the way when something great happens.

The other thing you can do, instead of using the Fireworks mode is go ahead and press the Function button and we’ll go back to the Manual mode. Choose Manual mode. Now, this allows me a lot of access, a lot of functionality. And what I want to do is first, set my White Balance. So, go down, press the Down navigation button to access White Balance and set this to Day Light. This will get you the best colors really out of the fireworks. So, that’s set up Fine.

Now, the next thing, go up to Exposure Compensation. Now, you don’t want to change the Exposure Compensation but what you do want to do is hit the Display button to access the long exposure function or the long shutter function. Now here, you can set it manually to two seconds, or you can set it to three seconds, or four seconds, anything up to 15 seconds. So, you can really play with it and see which one produces the best picture for you with the fireworks rotating a picture off. So, I’m going to leave it on two seconds and hit the Function button to escape.

Now, that I have my manual sets, my exposure is set to a long shutter two seconds and set to Day Light. My Flash is turned off, my ISO is set to 80. And the last thing you can do is trying to help the camera focus by setting the Landscape mode. Go ahead and press the left navigation button and move over to the right to choose Infinity. This will help the camera focus on subjects on a distance. So, anything that’s farther than let’s say about 20 feet, the camera will have a much easier time focusing if this is set. With fireworks, this can come in pretty handy.

So as before, press the Shutter button halfway, focus on your target. And then because we are set to two seconds very, very steadily, press the Shutter button the rest of the way and hold the camera as still as you can without letting it go even if it’s on a tripod, it can shake a little bit. So, press the Shutter button halfway, focus, press it the rest of the way to take the picture and just hang on to a very gently but don’t let go of the camera.

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