Lightening bolt

[TrickyRic]

Been a little busy recently with the business, and we have visitors for the week so I'm behind with photography. Took this shot a couple of days ago now and am finally here to show it off!

My last attempts at catching a lightening bolt didn't result so well. I broke a tripod, netting has gotten in the way, rain almost killed the camera at one point, and so on.

The latest storm happened during the day time, the light was too heavy for a long shutter and I don't yet have ND filters. I do however, have a new tripod, and a new hole in the netting on the balcony so all is good! I stuck to an 18mm lens with an apeture of 22 and a shutter of 1.3, anything slower and the light was too intense. Unfortunately I missed the huge bolts, but this piddle of a thing was captured right in the corner of one lucky frame and I managed to take a nice crop of it. No post processing here, other than the crop.

(The large blob to the left by the way, is sensor dust which I havn't yet bothered to process out. I tried blowing it out with a priming pump that came with a floor cleaning robot, but to no avail. I also have a large array of dust on the mirrors that I can't seem to clear away with dust removal papers, and between the front and inner glass of my larger lens appears to be at least 4 large dust particles that thankfully don't show up in the shots. Any cleaner recommendations for the dust on my body mirrors and sensor would be much appreciated!)