Fourth of July fireworks

I love fireworks. I always have. So, every Fourth of July, I'm always excited to go somewhere and take some pictures. From my first session where I had both a tripod and a camera:

From my second session, with a better location:

From last year:

How to take pictures of fireworks

• You need a tripod.
• It is usually better to find a good vantage point farther away than to try and view them from where everybody else is. Telephoto lenses help.
• Generally, unless you know what the display is going to look like, you need to work under the shotgun principle. The more shots you take, the more likely you'll get something.
• Composition is important. Generally, you want to compose what your finished shot should look like with respect to any buildings or scenery and take several hundred shots without moving the camera.
• Your meter isn't going to help that much. You want to use manual exposure mode. And, while you are at it, manual focus.
• Cooler cameras have bulb mode and can take a cable release. If you have bulb mode, you can open the shutter and then close it after the burst has finished bursting.
• Slightly less cool cameras, like the Canon G7 and G9, have a "Custom Delay" function where you can press the shutter and it'll take 9 shots in a row at your desired shutter speed.
• Even less cool cameras will just have a timer delay so that you don't get as much shake from pushing the shutter release button
• Generally you want your aperture set as wide open as you can get it and the ISO fairly low.
• You should chimp and check exposure times. You probably want a shutter time that's a few seconds.
• The film doesn't matter nearly as much as you'd think. I find that slide film is easier to deal with because then I don't wonder if the fireworks are supposed to be green or purple. But when dealing with bright contrasty light that moves across the scene, reciprocity effect is avoided and it's going to be bright and vivid colors either way. However, if you have scenery in the background, color balance will matter.
• Obviously, the flash is going to be of no use 95% of the time.