I'd never photographed fireworks before, so I decided this year would be the year. Originally, I thought of going over to Jersey City to shoot the Macy's fireworks, but I didn't really want to deal with the mega crowds or the train ride. So I did an online search and found a fireworks show close to home in Nutley, NJ, only a 10 minute drive away.

When shooting fireworks, some key things to keep in mind are: a tripod is a must; use a zoom lens to make zooming in or out easy if you need to; set the focus on manual, then adjust it to infinity and forget about it; set the ISO 100; select an aperture between f8 - f16. You will have to adjust the shutter speed a bit until you get it right. I shot most of my images at 2.5 seconds. Next time I might experiment with speeding up the shutter speed a tad bit. Oh, and the other tool I used was my wireless remote. Once I had the camera aimed in the right location, I didn't have to touch it again. This helped to minimize any shake from manually pressing the shutter.

My settings:
Exposure 2.5 sec
Aperture f/11.0
Focal Length 28 mm
ISO 100