Opinions on video taping show

[PGHBoom]

How do you video tape you fireworks show? What type of camera/phone and are there any special setting you use to get a nice focused picture? Many videos come in and out of focus a lot.

[3 Fingers]

I've tried a bunch of different cams / ideas. Ended up with a GoPro back far enough to capture the entire space. The Hero 4 has pretty good audio too. Just have to remember to turn it on and put it on a tripod so it is stable. The GoPro will record up to 4K if you have the horsepower to play that back. I just use 1080p and they look great.

[Bazerk]

How do you video tape you fireworks show? What type of camera/phone and are there any special setting you use to get a nice focused picture? Many videos come in and out of focus a lot.

The focus thing is annoying but easy to fix. You have to find out how your particular camera can be set to infinity as the focus setting. It will then take it out of auto focus and your problems will go away forever. :)

[ilovecrackle]

A lot of camcorders have a fireworks mode. If you have this option, try that. Camcorder does not try and auto focus in fireworks mode. I'm assuming the fireworks mode setting puts the camera in infinity mode as Bezek mentioned above.

[chriskrc]

Always try and have someone monitoring the camera as well with the knowledge of the plan you have for filming your show too. We have recorded a few shows and always made sure someone handled the camera even with it on a tripod. You never know what may happen so it's always good to have someone there.

[PGH_Pyro]

dont use a go pro, the audio is garbage and the angle of the lens is too wide. it warps the image too much .
a good recent 1080 or even better, 4K video camera is the way to go with an external shotgun-type microphone .
this has been discussed, prior in detail . not sure where the thread/posts are .

[djsmurf]

Any decent camera will have an infinity lock option. With that on it should stop your camera from attempting to adjust focus and lock it on infinity.

[mjbland05]

I used a go pro last year, and while pgh_pyro's criticisms are valid, it still did a fine job for me for capturing the basic show. It definitely does fisheye the show a little bit. I also recorded my show with the camera rotated 90 degrees so i didn't have to be crazy far away to capture the show & i thought it would be easy to rotate the video afterwards .... but it's not. I did find a way to do it, but it was a hassle.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

We bought a SONY Handycam HDR-CX440 last year. It's a tiny little thing and it uses a micro SD card. I used it to tape last years show. It did an okay job, but the focus did go in and out.

Come to find out, the camera actually has a "fireworks" setting! Duh... Well, I have it set to fireworks mode now for this years show. Hopefully it will do a much better job now that it's configured properly.

Not sure what it cost (my wife picked it up), but I think it was only a few hundred bucks.