First time with Lightning

[eccs19]

Had a storm heading out way last night, so I grabbed the camera and played a bit. This is the best I came up with. I know I could have done better. Anyone got any lightning capturing tips? I was going with long exposures, but not sure if that's the ideal technique or not.

 

[LCARSx32]

30 second exposures seem to work really well. ISO 100. I shot wide open with my 50mm f/2. I just stood there and click, wait 30 seconds, click, wait again, click. I think the big thing is to find something interesting for the foreground. Good first attempt! :thumbup:

Here's how mine turned out: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/photography-beginners-forum-photo-gallery/218069-first-lightning-shots.html

 

[SrBiscuit]

def great first attempt!
i would crop the **** out of that and go for a super wide cinematic crop.
nicely done.

 

[o hey tyler]

I want to say Buckster either posted a thread, or commented on another lightning post with a lot of good information. The thing that jumped out at me however, was the white balance being off. Try Tungsten next time for "TEH BLUE EFF EX".

 

[eccs19]

Thanks for the comments. The one thing that I wish I had done different, would have been to use a different focal length. These were with a 28mm, and I would have liked to have had a closer view. I think something in the 50+ range would have been good. (like LCARSx32 did) I think this shot was done at 10 seconds, but I did try a few 30 second shots as suggested. I wasn't sure if wide open, or closed down would have been best. I think I was a couple stops closed up from wide open.

 

[tomato1236]

Looks great. Just chop it so it's panorama-style and it would be terrific. There's just a lot of black space.

 

[darkchild]

Man... I thought about trying one of these today... but I chickened out. It was midnight at sunset... the wind picked up to "oh my God, I hope my car is still in the driveway when this is done" speeds and instead of attempting to find a spot where Tewey and I would stay dry (and not blow away), I decided to unplug my Mac Mini, my hard-drives, grab Tewey (which is my camera, if you haven't figured that out by now, ) and Robin, my cat ( :auses to let that sink in for a second:: ), and hi-tailed it downstairs waiting for the inevitable tornado to hit.

It didn't.

But I'm a chicken.



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Nice first shots though... I agree on the white balance thing though. :sillysmi:

i wish i had a cool name for my camera :/

- i like this picture but i would crop it, take some off the top and some off the bottom.