Taking pictures of storms

[Meridethk]

Taking pictures of lightning is something that really interests me. Although i dont have a clue where to start.

What kind of settings on my camera to use?
should i use a tripod?

I have a cannon 40D with a 28-135mm lens

I need to know everything their is about taking pictures of storms.

 

[Jaszek]

tripod, remote and bulb. just open your sensor and once you see the lightning close it.

 

[skieur]

Find a location with an interesting foreground. Buildings, a lake, farm etc. are good examples. Close down your fstop to f16 and ISO to 100. Use a tripod and bulb setting to hold the shutter open during a few lightning strikes. Experiment with your time exposure. I would start at 15 to 30 seconds and adjust according to what I was getting and whether there was any ambient light. During the day, I would probably also use neutral density or polarizer to get down into time exposure territory for the light reading.

skieur

 

[Phranquey]

I give a short "how I do it" down in post #15 of this thread...


http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/landscape-cityscape/114461-little-lightning-anyone.html

 

[Stosh]

All the above is excellent info. I just wanted to add that if you had a timer remote, you could set it and not worry about manning your bulb. Once you get your exposure right from ambient light, let it keep snapping away.

 

[KmH]

A 15 second Internet search yielded 185,000 hits for Photographing Lightning . Happy reading.

Check out A. T. Willet's web site. I shot some other stuff with this guy a couple of times when I still worked in AZ.