Can anyone suggest a good way to get a sharp focus on fireworks? I have a Canon T1i DSLR and would like to shoot video of fireworks displays in my community. When I tried this last year, I could not get anything resembling a sharp focus. I'm a lousy judge of distance so I wasn't sure how far away the fireworks were. They were in a large park and I was in the park but I didn't know how many meters/yards I was from the fireworks and, of course, the fireworks travelled a substantial distance as they exploded.
Chances are you would be more than 100 feet/30 meters away. Just set your focus (manually) on Infinity. Anything closer could be slightly out of focus. Everything further away should be fine.
How do I set my focus on Infinity with the T1i? Do I need to turn off autofocus first? I'm guessing I do because if I just find a piece of empty sky, the autofocus will just keep trying to guess what my center of interest is....
YES. You turn off the auto focus and set the focus manually. I am also using a T1i and there is a little switch on the lens marked as AF (auto focus) and M (manual).
