How to photograph fireworks with iPhone

To capture fireworks photos with iPhone, you'll need a camera capable of taking long exposure photos. Because the shutter speed of the iPhone camera is limited by hardware to 1 second, you can’t use the iPhone stock camera app to take photos of fireworks.

Luckily, creative developers found ways to overcome the hardware limitations of the iPhone camera and created apps that enable you to take photos with longer shutter speeds.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can capture stunning photos of fireworks with your iPhone. You’ll learn, what you need and how to get the shot.

Table of Contents

Sample photos of fireworks shot on iPhone
Recommended Camera Apps and Gear
Preparing your iPhone and Slow Shutter Cam App
How to Photograph fireworks with iPhone
Adjustments you may need to make
Summary

Sample photos of fireworks shot on iPhone

Before we begin with the firework photography tutorial, here are a few sample photos of a firework I took with my iPhone in my hometown, Linz, Austria. I took the photos from a nearby bridge to get a good view of the show. I took all of these firework photos using an iPhone Xs, Slow Shutter Cam App and a tripod.

Recommended Camera Apps and Gear to Photograph Fireworks with an iPhone

To photograph fireworks with an iPhone, you need three things:

First, you’ll need an app capable of taking long exposure photos, like Slow Shutter Cam App, that I use.
Secondly, you’ll need a tripod and a proper tripod mount for your iPhone
Lastly, I’ll recommend to use remote shutter release to avoid camera shake and blurry photos

Let’s cover these requirements one by one.

Slow Shutter Cam App

Slow Shutter Cam App is an iPhone camera app that allows you to capture long exposure photos. But any other long exposure camera app will work, too. Just make sure it supports the so-called bulb mode.

Bulb mode is an essential feature when you want to photograph a firework with your iPhone. It allows you to open and close the shutter manually. So you don’t have to worry about getting the exposure time right.

To learn more, please refer to my Slow Shutter Cam App review that I published a while ago on the blog.

Tripod and iPhone tripod mount

You can use basically any tripod with iPhone, provided you have a proper iPhone tripod mount.

I'm a bit picky when it comes to tripods. As I love to travel light, a tripod has to be very light and has to fit into my Osprey Farpoint 40 carry-on backpack and also into my Gonex foldable backpac k that I use as a day pack on site when I travel.

As for the tripod mount, I use Joby Griptight iPhone tripod mounts. For the fireworks photos in this tutorial, I used the Joby Griptight Pro mount.

Remote Shutter Release

A remote shutter release is an essential accessory for photographing fireworks with iPhone. I strongly recommend using a remote shutter release to avoid camera shake when pressing the shutter release. I also tried using the timer that’s built into Slow Shutter Cam App, but that one didn’t work out for me.

Secondly, I recommend using a remote shutter release that you can operate without looking at it because your eyes should be at the sky where all the action is happening and not on the remote shutter release to find the correct button to press.

Preparing your iPhone and Slow Shutter Cam App to photograph fireworks

After you’ve scouted and found the perfect location for an unobstructed view of the fireworks, set up your tripod and iPhone. Then you need to take care of a few settings of your iPhone and Slow Shutter Cam App:

First, turn off auto-lock in the iPhone's display settings. You usually have to react quickly when photographing fireworks. Thus, you don’t want your iPhone to accidentally turn off the screen so that you have to unlock it again.
Then, switch to light trail mode in Slow Shutter Cam App.
Next, based on learnings from previous attempts to photograph fireworks with an iPhone, I set the light sensitivity to 1/2.
Then set the shutter speed in Slow Shutter Camera App to bulb. This mode allows you to keep the shutter open as long as you need. I wouldn't try to use any time-based exposure setting. The fireworks will be over before you figured the perfect setting.

Settings I used for photographing a firework with Slow Shutter Cam App

Once we’ve applied the above settings, tap on any distant object on the screen to set focus and exposure to infinity. And now, the most crucial part: we’ll lock AE and AF in Slow Shutter Cam App to avoid the autofocus kicking in.

You do that by taping the AE and AF icons in the toolbar, so they turn to a lock.

Now let’s wait for the fireworks to begin.

How to Photograph fireworks with iPhone

Before we start, here’s a little tip: Slow Shutter Cam App is capable of doing multiple exposures into one, single, frame. The trick for capturing such photos of fireworks with iPhone and Slow Shutter Cam app is to turn off auto save in Slow Shutter Cam App. So, after you take a photo, Slow Shutter Cam App will display a little toolbar at the bottom of the screen asking you if you’d like to discard, edit or save your photo.

Don’t tap any of those options.

Just press the shutter release again, and you’ll create a second exposure within the same frame, basically combining multiple photos into a single frame.

This is how I got this photo, which consists of four exposures.

To trigger the shutter, I used the Joby Impulse remote shutter release. It’s small and easy to use.

Now, while looking at the launch site of the fireworks, I pressed the remote shutter release whenever I saw a firework rocket being launched to open the shutter and once again after 1–2 seconds once it exploded. That’s why I set the shutter release to bulb mode in Slow Shutter Cam App. You can manually open and close the shutter without needing to guess the correct shutter speed.

Adjustments you may need to make

Start taking photos right when the fireworks are set off - even if those aren't the most beautiful rockets.

Use these first few photos to validate the settings you made previously. If the photo looks too bright in the sense that you just see bright, white, light instead of the colors of the exploding rocket, you may have to turn down the light sensitivity a notch from, e.g. 1/2 to 1/4.

Don’t change ISO; otherwise the black, nightly sky may become quite noisy.

And now, let’s take some great iPhone photos of fireworks together.

And if there are no fireworks near you soon, head over to my post about how to take a long exposure with iPhone. You'll find some ideas to practice your long exposure photography skills with an iPhone there.

Summary

To take photos of fireworks with an iPhone, you have to use a tripod and a dedicated long exposure camera app like Slow Shutter Cam App I reviewed on the blog. I also recommend using a remote shutter release to avoid camera shake.

Use the first few shots to validate and adjust the settings I outlined in this blog post, and then focus (pun intended) on taking great photos of a firework with your iPhone. It’s possible.

How to shoot fireworks with iPhone: The complete guide

Sample photos of fireworks shot on iPhone