Lightning for C&C

benlonghair · Jul 25, 2009

Hi everyone. I can't stop smiling looking at these photos.

Here's the story behind these photos. When I went to bed last night, the weather channel had been saying that we might be in for some storms. So I watched out the window to the west for a few minutes, and, sure enough, I see lightning bouncing around. So I get up and check weather underground radar and see a cell going to the south of me.

So I hook up the 18-55, set it at 18mm, back-focus from infinity a little, set it to 30 seconds, and went outside in my bathrobe with a trash bag to keep the camera dry. I could see just enough to know I was getting lots of sky.

Here are the results. They're a little noisy, but I'm ok with that, plus they're RAWs so I can play with it a little. I did a little cloning of hot pixels, and a chimney on a two of them. WB adjustment as well. Cropped. That's it. Click for EXIF.

benlonghair · Jul 25, 2009

Here's looking west as the storm approaches. Cloned out some hot pixels, upped the exposure slightly, changed WB a little and scaled it, that's all I did.

Samanax · Jul 25, 2009

Nice captures.

Kerplunq · Jul 25, 2009

Good stuff! Lightning shots always impress me, and I also like the look of the storm rolling in.

Kimba · Jul 27, 2009

this is my dream, to catch a storm in action. unfortunately there has not been one here for many months and we are not exprecting any till christmas time so will have to wait.

they are amazing shots. well done

manaheim · Jul 27, 2009

heheh... 2nd one is very cool.

benlonghair · Jul 27, 2009

I'm thinking that in the future I need to stop the lens down a little (maybe like f/8 or f/13) to keep from blowing out the bolt and make it slightly sharper.

It also makes me want to get a really big strobe that would allow me to light the foreground. The second one would be awesome if the trees had some light on them. Stupid shooting at midnight.