Lightning...

[Firelance]

Some time ago I took picture of lightning during the night. I don't have any idea weather I have really shot a lightning, all I can tell is that I sometimes used a tripod. Mostly, actually, I just put my camera towards the window, with god knows what diafragma. A lightning must be something like 1/50 of a sec, so when I opened the shutter whilst pointing to the stormy air, the actual light comming in to the camera, would also be 1/50 of a sec, because it was night, dark....(right? :? )
Is my technique good enough?

Anyhow, I used an Ilford HP5 Plus 400 Iso film, my question is: How must I develop the film? Normal? Longer or shorter developing?

Thanks

 

[Digital Matt]

Well, I don't know about the developing end, but I have a question about when you took the photo. Did you time it just right that you clicked the shutter when the lightning struck? That's pretty hard to do. It's much easier to use a smaller aperture, and open the shutter for several seconds, and try and catch many lightning strikes. If there's lots of extraneous light you can cover the lens between strikes.

 

[ksmattfish]

Without more info, I'd recommend normal dev time.

Many night scenes are very high contrast: get the shadows right and the highlights are blocked up, or the highlights are good and the shadows are way underexposed. To reduce contrast you would intentionally underexpose, and then overdevelop. By how much has a lot to do with the camera, the film, the photographer, the chems, etc..., but you could experiment with a 1 stop under exposure and a 50% increase in dev time.

 

[Firelance]

Well, I finally developed it at normal time. I think that it's well developed, I see alot of enlightened pictures (because of the lightnings of course), but I think there's only one where you can see a lightning...

Thanks anyway!