Shooting Lightning...

[D-B-J]

My lightning recipe:

Tripod
Wide angle
Buildings or other elements to juxtapose the lightning with/against
Long shutter (usually 30 seconds, depending on how dark it is out)
Tight aperture
Focus set to infinity and locked down
Lots of frames - most will be throwaways - once in a while, you get a 'keeper':

Where do you place your camera? I know all the settings i would need, and have the ability to do that, i just dont know where to put my camera. Inside? Through a pane-window? In a door frame? Under a small overhang?

Gorgeous shot btw!
Regards,
Jake

 

[Buckster]

Where do you place your camera? I know all the settings i would need, and have the ability to do that, i just dont know where to put my camera. Inside? Through a pane-window? In a door frame? Under a small overhang?

Gorgeous shot btw!
Regards,
Jake

Thank you kindly.

Mostly, I try to stay dry, while pointing in the general direction of where I think I'll get lighting and hopefully something interesting in the foreground to play it against compositionally.

That said, I like to shoot from inside door frames, garages or barns (nice big door openings) and, my favorite: Parking garages on the deck just below the top. Sometimes I'll set up outdoors if it's not raining too hard, with my camera and lens dressed in rain gear.

I'm not too crazy about shooting from indoors behind windows because they usually have rain drops all over them pretty quickly and I'm rarely going for a surrealist Dali effect.

Keep in mind that lightning is pretty dangerous stuff, so be careful about exposing yourself and your equipment to it.

 

[LiveStrong2009]

Here is my first successful attempt.

This was shot by repeatedly taking 30 second exposures at around f11.

 

[Buckster]

Here is my first successful attempt.

This was shot by repeatedly taking 30 second exposures at around f11.

Congrats! Nicely done!

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

You can use bulb setting if the storm is pretty consistent. Haven't you ever counted from during a storm as a kid? You hear thunder and count, or count from flash to flash to get a rough idea, then use bulb with all the same settings. You can always set the long shutter speeds also, but if you don't want the extra noise because a flash happens quickly after you open the shutter, then it might not always be ideal. Either way will work with enough practice and patience though. Also, they make lightning triggers ( I think they are expensive around like $200-400 ) but somehow they sense lightning and release the shutter. If you specialized in shooting lightning or lived in an area that gets a lot of storms, it might be worth it.

 

[fredgettings]

sometimes it will show you all the settings that were used when taking the picture.

 

[ziggy777]

I have a good photo of a lightning strike, how do I post it on this thread?

 

[Phranquey]

I have a good photo of a lightning strike, how do I post it on this thread?

Best way is to place you photo on a hosting site like Photobucket or Flickr, and then link to it.

BTW.... you from the Cleveland area?? Your avatar is the old WMMS radio station logo.

 

[Buddy Thomason]

Shooting lightning is, for me at least, challenging and at times a bit scary. Here are a few captures from a big lightning storm in Colorado USA in 2009. It was a fast-moving storm, SE corner of Rocky Mountain National Park at about 9:30 PM or so. I used a Canon 1D MKII, 24-70 L zoom at approximately 35 mm, ISO 100, BULB mode, manual release timed to capture multiple flashes (beyond 30 sec noise is harsh and overexposure is an issue), in-camera noise reduction on, tripod:

This next strike scared the heck out of me (!) and I backed off for a while until there was more distance between me and the big ground strikes like this one.

Shooting these in RAW file format is important because white balance must be corrected due to the long exposures. The usual approach of framing the picture, fiddling with various settings etc. isn't practical. I pre-set the aperture between F8 and F11 and focus at infinity. Sure I got a bit wet, as did the camera/lens/tripod - but I don't worry about weather much because the 1 series Canon bodies and the L series lenses have excellent weather seals throughout.

In this case I was lucky to get some very powerful near-by ground strikes in rapid succession. One trick I've discovered is to release the shutter (terminate the exposure) the very instant a big strike occurs. The fine branching away from the main bolt is better preserved and the inevitable over-exposure is minimized. Regarding post-processing, little is required beyond cropping, white balance and additional noise reduction on occasion. The last thing I do to these in post-processing is use my sharpen brush at 2-4% in the 'lighten' mode applied to the lightning itself. For lighting strikes that aren't strong enough for my taste, I will sometimes use the high pass filter to sharpen the lightning detail. I use PSCS5 for post-processing.

Above all, never assume you're safe anywhere near lightning! Learn the best precautions to take, and apply them.

 

[antiquerookie]

Last October in Monument Valley AZ, I was trying to get some nightscape shots using a Nikon FE (35mm with analog exposure). The thunderstorms on the horizon in the distance generated enough lightning light to trip off the shutter so what I got was a very small zone of what might have been pretty detailed lightening shots and whole lot of black. Since the FE does autoexposure for however long it takes (hours if necessary), I was thinking about using it for fireworks shots this coming 4th of July. After reading the above posts and based on my Monument Valley experience, the FE would probably work for intentional lightning shots. It being a film camera, you 'd have to wait a few days to see what you got Since the 35mm frame size is 2.3 times the sensor size for a Nikon consumer digital camera, a good shot should have some neat detail.