After many years of avoiding fireworks displays (I hate the crowds), I've finally given in and decided to try my hand at shooting them. Here are my first efforts. For those who may be interested, I'll share my methodology for shooting them with my Canon 20D. Most of this is pretty common knowledge.

- Used a tripod (duh).
- Shot in raw format (see note below).
- Enabled mirror lockup and used cable release.
- Enabled noise reduction (see note below).
- Set ISO to 200 (although I suspect 100 would've worked fine as well).
- Set AF to manual and set it at infinity.
- Put the camera in manual exposure mode and started out at f/11 with a 3 second shutter.
Keeping the shutter speed constant, I would then check to histogram for blown highlights.
If they occured, I would then stop down the aperature until I was satisfied. After a while
I experimented with other shutter speeds. For longer exposures I'd stop down the
aperature more and with shorter speeds I'd open up.
- Shot mostly in vertical orientation although occasionally I'd switch horizontal to show
more of the surroundings.

Other notes:

While I shot in raw format using noise reduction, I found there is definitely a trade-off in doing so. On the upside, I found that shooting in raw enabled me to recover blown highlights (and color) of slightly overexposed shots. Noise reduction definitely decreases the amount of post processing as well and I think you definitely want to use it if you plan to include the surroundings. On the downside, the time between shots is long and frustrating (while NR is being applied to the large raw file) and you will miss many opportunities. I was probably only able to capture about 60 shots or so during a show. Next time, I may try shooting jpg.

Addendum to the notes above:

I now shoot with the Canon 5D and 1D Mark II N. The delays shooting raw with noise reduction no longer exist. The processing speeds of these cameras make this issue a thing of the past. Thank goodness for advancing technology!!