Storm - Spain shots 1

mentos_007 · Aug 8, 2006

Sorry guys but you need to be patient for a while.. I have so many photos from Spain to edit that I feel extremely tired when browsing thru all of them.. and so many to show you!

So here's the first set - and my first long exposures with canon 350d.
The exposures were about 300 second, bulb mode with my finger on a button (no remote yet).
All taken from the balcony...

Silly me I left ISO at 400 and the noise is quite visible on big shots...

doenoe · Aug 8, 2006

now thats what i call a storm. Well captured Mentos

I wish we had some lightning storms here, but noooooooooooooooo.........we just get the rainy part of the storms. Ill just be patient and look at your pics every now and then and say to myself that i took 'em.

Big Mike · Aug 8, 2006

Wow...great shots.

ccd333 · Aug 8, 2006

These are tremendous! You were able to get these pretty sharp in spite of no cable release. I see the noise, but on the smaller sizes it's not that bad. Might want to clean your sensor, though....there appears to be a spot in the right center portion of the top two shots. You could clone those out quite easily. Excellent, excellent job.

mentos_007 · Aug 8, 2006

oh my... I see it now! How can I check if my sensor is clean? I've never tried cleaning it simply because my camera is 3 weeks old!

And btw... thanks for nice comments

photos are so sharp because I tried not to breath... and when I had to, I took very little air trying not to move my finger...

skiboarder72 · Aug 8, 2006

gorgous!!! why dont I ever get shots like this

mentos_007 · Aug 8, 2006

and... what do you think about the last one? composition? to be honest... I used wide angle there (17 mm) because I had problems with... getting a lightening IN my picture... in most cases I missed them and it struck just around my original crop. So I decided to take wide angle and then crop the shot. the first 2 pics are original. the last one as well but I wanted to crop it... but then... it looks quite interesting with light and part of the balcony...

pursuer · Aug 8, 2006

These are amazing, the second shot is spectacular. A powerful storm rolled through where I live last night but it was too foggy to photograph the lightning

Im glad you were more successful

ccd333 · Aug 8, 2006

The last shot is surreal. The balcony and lights below help create another dimension to the scene. The outward angle on the front of the balcony "spire" adds to the appeal (and the orange tone). I also like the little bolt (of lightning) on the right side of the balcony....and the faint orange glow emanating from just above the mountain(?) on the far left. Very cool stuff! The entire image looks like something that should be on a heavy metal rock band album cover. It's very compelling and has a painting/fine art like quality to it. What's really amazing is these are your first stabs at long exposures! It's very difficult to get good lightning shots....and while there are certainly debatable issues with cropping, noise, etc, the crux of the shots are those wonderfully vibrant strands of electric light! You should be very proud of them exactly as they are.

You know the sensor needs cleaning when you see spots like this. It's not uncommon for this to happen even in the first few weeks (my Pentax did the same thing). The problem is that if the camera seems to be prone to it...then it's going to be a constant battle. Being very careful when and where you change lenses will help, but the fact is I've never changed mine (I just have the one kit lens) and I still get spots. The other thing I've noticed is they seem to come and go....certain exposures seem to bring them out more. I've cleaned mine once with a blower and that helped, but I still get one here and there. What I've become more adept at doing is cloning the spots out. But it's kind of a nuisance to do so. I would try cleaning it per the manual's instructions and see what happens.

Pentax and Sony now have DSLR's with sensor cleaning vibration modes that seem to help significantly (following the lead of Olympus).

ccd333 · Aug 8, 2006

One suggestion I might have for improvement....and this is the purist landscape photographer coming out...on the top two I would crop out the bottom foregrounds (right to where the water starts). They don't add much to the scene because the darkness doesn't allow for much detail extraction for the eye. They are more of a distraction than anything. This will also serve to put that much more emphasis on the lightning by making the image simpler. Richard is right, the second one is really something....the lateral bolts and the very ominous cloud base give it that extra pizazz! I wouldn't change a thing on the third one....I love it.