Using Live Comp On EM 10 for Fireworks

We had our Beaumont Daze yesterday and it was an excellent opportunity to try the OMD EM10 live comp function. The live comp function differs from Bulb and Live Time in that it only includes exposures that are brighter than the reference photo; this means that it will not overexpose the background or previous exposures.

To photograph fireworks I:
+ turned Noise Reduction off(note not noise filter; Look under the E menu)
+ Placed the camera on a tripod (on a side note, because the EM10 has a LCD screen that slides out, it did not matter that the travel tripod I chose was shorter than I was. I was comfortable able to view the screen.)
+ Turned the dial to Manual Mode
+ Turned focus to manual and focussed to a distant point
+ selected an aperture f11-f20 (You need a small aperture to handle the bright lights)
+ Turned the Shutter dial until Live Comp came up
+ Hit the menu button and chose the time for each capture
+ since the area I was had enough stray lighting, I chose 1 second
+ Pressed the shutter once to get a reference photo
+ Pressed the shutter a second time to start the Live Comp

The picture develops on the screen. When you like what you see, hit the shutter again to stop taking photos. It is important to have noise reduction (note not noise filter) turned off, otherwise composing the picture can take along time. This was significantly easier than taking long exposures with the Nikon D7000.