Canon G10: Set for Fireworks Scene

Learn how to optimize the Canon G10 for a fireworks scene

Canon G10: Set for Fireworks Scene To set-up your camera for fireworks, you have a couple of different options, one very simple. The camera does have a scene mode for fireworks so go ahead and turn your mode dial to SCN stands for scene and while it automates a lot of things, you can profile the camera very easily. Turn the dial until you get to fireworks here it is the fireworks icon means that everything is automated; my shutter speed is two seconds to capture fireworks. My flash is turned off, my ISO is an automatic and my white balance is also automatic. So this is one way of doing it and this is okay, it won’t help you with the focus. I don’t have access to manual focus because everything is automated and this might cause a little bit of a problem because it may be a little difficult to focus on moving targets and things like fireworks. The other thing you can do is instead of using this mode which obligates you an auto ISO and auto white balance which may not get you the best quality out of those fireworks in the richest colors. What you want to do is very simple, set your mode dial to TV. TV stands for time value, this will allow you to set the shutter speed or the camera sets the picture accordingly. Hit your ISO on AD, this will get you the best and smoothest colors and are exposure is at zero. so everything stays the same. Set the mode dial is at TV. Now in the back my flash is turned off, if your flash is not turned off go ahead and turned that off by pressing the flash button right here and you can either turn it on or turn it off, use the flash off icon and hit set. Our white balance is turned in such daylight and this is great to get the most accurate colors out of those fireworks, so if you’re white balance is not set to daylight. Press your shortcut button. I set up my shortcut button in the getting started guide so it will access the white balance and make sure yours is at the daylight. You can just use the wheel to turn this and set that to daylight and hit set. Now for the shutter speed, down here you have your shutter speed displayed and you have this little arrows, which indicate I can use my dial to change this, so I want to change this to two seconds. There we go, two seconds is a good real of thumb. If you want to see longer strings out of the fireworks, you may want to extend that more than two seconds or two seconds is a pretty good place to start just to get a benchmark to see what kind of pictures you’re getting. Now we are using a tripod because it is a two-second exposure, but in this case, you don’t want to set that two seconds timer. Normally, when we use a tripod you press the drive mode option down here, press the down navigation button to access the drive mode and it go to two seconds timer so you can release the camera and let it kind of settle down before taking the picture. In this case, you want the picture to be taken as soon as you press the shutter button, so you don’t want to set that two seconds timer. Now the last thing is the manual focus because you may have difficulty focusing on the fireworks and because it takes a little bit longer to focus on the fireworks especially if you want to get it just before it explodes. You may want to set the manual focus. So right here MF the open navigation button is manual focus, just go on and press that and then use your dial as you can see here, it says with lower green arrows I can use my dial to move this. I want to move this all the way to infinity. There’s really no need to guess infinity is what you want for anything at any kind of distance from the camera. Now go ahead and press the shutter button. You don’t need to focus because the focus is already been set infinity it’s just a matter of giving at that second to get set up so it’s ready for the picture. Once the explosion happens, once you’re ready to take a picture go ahead and press the shutter button the rest of the way. Now keep in mind you want this on a tripod and you want to keep holding the camera for the entire two seconds very gently and very steadily. You don’t want to shake the camera obviously, two seconds is a very, very long exposure so press t he shutter button, hold it down and keep holding the camera very, very steadily until the camera has finished taking the picture. To find out much more about Digital Photography and your Digital camera, go to LBGuides.com.