Lightning

Digital Matt · Jun 7, 2004

Hey gang,

I've been away for a while, but I'm making my way back. I moved, and then had to replace a hard drive, and now I'm building a new computer so I can handle these huge digital files. Anyhoo, this was a shot that I got a couple of weeks ago. This was my first attempt at shooting lightning, something I've always wanted to do. Lemme know what you think.

Harpper · Jun 7, 2004

This is a nice shot for a first attempt. What's nice about this shot is that there is a sense of depth with the lightning on the left compared to the lightning on the right.

tr0gd0o0r · Jun 7, 2004

is it just me or is that pole on the left glowing from a lightning strike?

Jeff Canes · Jun 7, 2004

tr0gd0o0r said:
is it just me or is that pole on the left glowing from a lightning strike?

I agree, the pole on the left is glowing, not sure if it is for a strike or refection for the lightning :scratch:

danalec99 · Jun 7, 2004

mrsid99 · Jun 7, 2004

Neat shots but I'd like to see them in color.

photong · Jun 7, 2004

Sweet! Good one!
Here is my first try:

craig · Jun 7, 2004

Dramatic and electrifying and everything else! To me the left side of the frame may be a little hot.

Lungfarmer · Jun 7, 2004

Great photo! I really need to try this sometime soon. Hell, it's been storming for a week and it's supposed to continue, I should get my hiney outside for the next storm!

drdan · Jun 8, 2004

So what are the specs on the new computer? I found an 8MB cache on the hard drive really improved retrieval of big photo files.

vonnagy · Jun 8, 2004

sweet pic bro! looks like you been shooting lightning all your life!

cindavphoto · Jun 9, 2004

Wow, I'd love to get something that great. But there's a problem...you see...I'm terrible afraid of storms.

Digital Matt · Jun 10, 2004

Thanks everyone

I don't think the lightning struck that pole. I think it was behind it and it just illumintated the pole. I went b&w with this because there were some tungsten lights out of the photo that made it very orange, and it didn't look good. This is actually a composite of two shots. The lightning strike on the right was from another shot that I blended in with this one.

FYI, my new computer has a p4 2.8ghz Northwood proc, 2 gigs of Crucial pc2700 DDR ram, a Western Digital 160g serial ATA hard drive, and an ATI Radeon 9600 128mb video card. The mobo is an MSI pt880, with 800mhz FSB. I bought a nice big black Antec case with a 400w PSU. All that for $1000. Too bad the mobo was bad, and I had to send it back.

I'm waiting for that to come in now.

Thanks again everyone

StvShoop · Jun 10, 2004

nice lightning man
i tried that a few weeks ago... got 1,000,000 pics of BLACK! and one tiny strike that i wasn't zoomed in for
for yours, were you using a video camera or a continuous advance feature? it seems like that's the only way to catch them

about your pc, does video card increase performance in photoshop and other imaging applications? I ask my gaming friends and they don't seem to know. 2 gigs of ram :shock: the aforementioned gamers would choke on their pepsi if they heard that. i KNOW that'll beef up rendering

Digital Matt · Jun 10, 2004

Stv, I just had my shutter open for a few minutes. I tried earlier unsucessfully because the lightning was too far away and not strong enough. These were very close, very bright strikes of lightning. I was using my 70-300 lens at 70mm for these shots.

Having video memory can help in photoshop, but you don't need a 3d gaming card. I got that card because it was the cheapest card I could get that had 128mb of vid ram. Matrox makes very good 2d video cards for professionals, but they are expensive. A matrox card with 128mb ram is $342.00

The 2 gigs of ram should be nice, yes