Lightning

[Jeremy Z]

Crappy quality, but a good burst of electricity. I think this was about a 4s exposure, and since I didn't have it in "Night Scene" mode, it is noisy & has hot pixels. Oh well. (Olympus C-750)

 

[LaFoto]

Anyhow, you were luckier with this one than I have ever been!
I have NEVER in all my life managed to get a photo of lightning myself!
Therefore: congratulations!

 

[Alex_B]

those flashes of lighning give a funny pattern

i am sure this image could be tinkred with in postprocessing to improve it great deal in terms of noise and hot pixels.

 

[Alex_B]

my (very quick and dirty) approach to it:

 

[Tyson]

That storm hangs over my house all the time, I think my wife brings it.

 

[lostprophet]

That storm hangs over my house all the time, I think my wife brings it.

LOL

 

[Jeremy Z]

Anyhow, you were luckier with this one than I have ever been!
I have NEVER in all my life managed to get a photo of lightning myself!
Therefore: congratulations!

1) Having a storm and either having your camera protected, or when the lightning starts before the rain.

2) A lot of shooting! This was one shot out of probably 80. There were a couple others with lightning in them, but not enough to make the pic worthwhile. I just set focus to infinity, point it skyward, set 2 stops of underexposure, and did one bulb shot after another.

Anyhow, there was no luck involved. I stood out there firing one bulb shot after another at a small aperture. Set focus to infinity, high resolution, and point the camera in the area where the lightning seems to be most frequent. When I saw a good flash, I released the shutter. Eventually, I have to get something, right? This was one shot out of about 80.

Alex: Thanks much for the editing. How did you do it?

 

[Jeremy Z]

Alex, would you please do one more for me?

This one doesn't have as much lightning, but I like the surreal look of the tree branches' movement. I guess I should break down and buy an Adobe product soon...

 

[Alex_B]

what is the idea of setting 2 stops of underexposure when you use bulb exposure and a given aperture anyway?

Alex: Thanks much for the editing. How did you do it?

used neatimage against the noise with some emphasis on the daqrker parts of the clouds (this could be improved, this was just a quick and dirty try)

then i just gave the PS clone tool a chance and clicked on the spots like a devil took me a bout a minute to remove them. again, not perfectly done

 

[Jeremy Z]

what is the idea of setting 2 stops of underexposure when you use bulb exposure and a given aperture anyway?

You're right, I could not have set underexposure, since it had to be in manual mode... :blushing: