My first lightning picture

Josh66 · Aug 1, 2008

I have been trying *forever* to capture lightning in a bottle (made of flash memory, encased in plastic

). Finally got a few tonight. Sadly, this is the only one that I felt was "TPF worthy" - I missed a ton of good shots messing around with settings, changing lenses, camera pointed in wrong direction, opening a new beer, etc...

I am happy to have FINALLY gotten a lightning picture though. I just wish there was something more interesting in the foreground, but hey - that's where I live, not much interesting scenery around here...

Josh66 · Aug 1, 2008

Can anyone see the picture?

It isn't loading anymore for me...

K_Pugh · Aug 1, 2008

loads for me. good capture though, looks like a big prehistoric bird looking for its prey.

Josh66 · Aug 1, 2008

Thanks K Pugh.

It's loading for me now. I deleted all of my cookies and it works now (not sure why that fixed it...), for some reason it kept trying to transfer data from google-analitics & paypal (usually it just says 'transfering data from TPF', not sure what all that other crap was doing on there...).

K_Pugh · Aug 1, 2008

Yep, weird, sometimes mine does the google anylitics thing and doesn't load some TPF pages, just blank and i have to refresh.

Photo Phil · Aug 1, 2008

Looks Really Good. I tried a couple days ago but i failed at it. Every time I tried different settings lighting would strike and i missed it. Kinda hard to get a good one. How did you get it?

Ccauceg · Aug 1, 2008

Photo Phil said:
Looks Really Good. I tried a couple days ago but i failed at it. Every time I tried different settings lighting would strike and i missed it. Kinda hard to get a good one. How did you get it?

I good shots when I have a pretty closed aperture (like f22 or f16) You just gotta treat it like a flash exposure.

Josh66 · Aug 1, 2008

Photo Phil said:
Looks Really Good. I tried a couple days ago but i failed at it. Every time I tried different settings lighting would strike and i missed it. Kinda hard to get a good one. How did you get it?

Tripod is absolutely a must. I put it into Bulb, then with the remote opened the shutter for 10-15 seconds, close then try again. If lightning hit while the shutter was open I closed it as soon as the lightning finished. Pretty much the same way you would shoot fireworks if you've ever done that.

Out of about 50 pictures, 4 of them actually had lightning in them (missed a bunch of good ones that hit right as I closed the shutter, or I just didn't get it in the frame), this was the only one that I thought was pretty good.