How do you capture lightning?!

John the Greek · Jul 26, 2005

I was at the grand canyon last week and at night there was a thunderstorm across the canyon, setting my camera solid on ledge, and setting it for f16 or f19, and a shutter speed of 30 seconds, I was hoping to capture some lightning.
I know for a fact that lightning struck during some of the 30 seconds exposures, and I took about 5-6 photos too... yet in the prints, no photos showed any lightning.

thebeginning · Jul 26, 2005

that's strange, sounds about how i would do it. maybe try using a wide aperture and high ISO speed, then wait until you see one and quick click off the shutter. you have to be fast, but it will work.

ok really though, that's how it (i think) i supposed to be done. are the pictures abnormally dark or anything?

SLOShooter · Jul 26, 2005

What did they look like? Underexposed or overexposed?

Big Mike · Jul 26, 2005

30 seconds is a long time...

Unless it was really dark, you would probably end up with really overexposed photos. If it was a dark night, then that might work but then you only get the lighting and no foreground.

capturedinfocus · Jul 26, 2005

I'm not an expert, but I have a theory...

Think of each photo in "layers". Say...every 1/10th of a second is a "layer". That would mean that there are 300 "layers" in a 30 second period of time. If lightning lasts for the first 4/10ths of a second of your 30 second time period, you're looking at 296 "layers" of darkness over only 4 "layers" of light. You've captured the lightning, but you're making it more and more transparent with every "layer" of darkness that your camera records. In the end, your lightning is so transparent that you cannot see it.

I would guess that your shutter speed should have been more in the range of ...probably half of what it was?

wharrison · Jul 26, 2005

John the Greek:

Your posting reminded me of a "trick" I once played on my neighbor, when I was a very young teenager (decades ago). During the previous weeks or month, I had taken several of my (then) first slides of lightning during a good old central Illinois prairie thunderstorm. For my first efforts, I was rather pleased - well they turned out to be rather good.

Several weeks later, we had another good, old rumbling thunderstorm travel through Peoria, IL and I decided to play a trick on our neighbor, who was an engineer at Keystone Steel and Wire Company. His son, Walter, (Wally) and I were the same age.

So one evening, I loaded up a nice slide in my Dad's trusty Bell & Howell slide projector and projected the image onto his white stucco house from my second story bedroom and turned off the lights. I then called Wally's father up and "informed" him that the lightning storm of recent past seemed to have produced tiny 'cracks' in his plastered stucco house and expressed my "concern".

Earl came running out of the house, saw the "cracks", saw the light coming out of my Dad's projector, and muttered more than a few undefinable words, and went disgustingly back into his home.

Oh well.

By the way, I did a quick and dirty search on Google for "photographing lighting" and came up with the following sites for you and others to enjoy.

Hope you find them useful sources of inspiration and information for your lightning endeavors!

Bill

Here's one link with illustrations. Enjoy!

http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/ltgph.html

Here's another interesting link. Again, enjoy! If you live in Indiana, you might be able to join them.

http://www.inchase.org/outflow/chad/lightningphoto.html

Here's a third source. Again, enjoy!

http://www.uscoles.com/phlightn.htm

And here's a fourth interesting source!

http://www.lightningsmiths.com/

Unimaxium · Jul 27, 2005

capturedinfocus said:
I'm not an expert, but I have a theory...

Think of each photo in "layers". Say...every 1/10th of a second is a "layer". That would mean that there are 300 "layers" in a 30 second period of time. If lightning lasts for the first 4/10ths of a second of your 30 second time period, you're looking at 296 "layers" of darkness over only 4 "layers" of light. You've captured the lightning, but you're making it more and more transparent with every "layer" of darkness that your camera records. In the end, your lightning is so transparent that you cannot see it.

I would guess that your shutter speed should have been more in the range of ...probably half of what it was?

Not quite. Because if the sky is completely dark during the time that the lightning is not flashing, then the film is simply not being exposed at that time. If lightning comes along, it will expose the film, and then after the flash the sky will go dark again and stop exposing it. Nothing special happens to the film when the shutter is opened if there is no light to hit it. If you're exposing a pitch-black scene then it's essentially the same as when the film is sitting in its cassette. And we know that if you leave a roll of exposed film sitting out for, say, 3 days, then your developed image won't be any more transparent or opaque than if you had left it out for 1 day.

As for John the Greek, are you sure that the lightning struck in front of the camera? Maybe it was just out of the frame or something and that you just weren't aimed in the right direction to capture it?

If that's not it, then maybe the only other thing I can think of is what ISO film did you use? If you used something like ISO 50 at f19, then maybe the lightning simply didn't expose enough on the film.