Woohoo! My first good lightning pics!!

[Olympus8MP]

Yay! I got my first good lightning captures today. A storm came through and I seized the opportunity. Enjoy!

1

2

 

[JimmyJaceyMom]

ooh yes those are nice!

 

[wxnut]

GREAT exposures. Looks like there was a little day light left. How long did you have the shutter open?

 

[Olympus8MP]

GREAT exposures. Looks like there was a little day light left. How long did you have the shutter open?

There was a little bit of daylight left. The longest exposure I could get was at f/22 and 100 ISO, but when I tried that, the lightning was too faint. What I did was use a few previous strikes to figure out what aperture to use (not too big or the lightning would wash out), then set the camera in aperture priority for that aperture. I let the camera do the shutter speed based on center weighted metering of the sky. These two photos were both 2.5 seconds @ f/9 aperture and 100 ISO.

I had a few more catches, but they were too far off frame to make an attractive crop.

 

[lostprophet]

great shots, I've always wanted to get shots like that

 

[doenoe]

nice shooting

 

[Olympus8MP]

Thanks!

Figures, as soon as I get back because my batteries all died, the real good cloud crawlers started up

 

[BoblyBill]

Good job, I know from expierence how hard it is to capture lightning.

 

[Olympus8MP]

I can't wait till the next storm now, I've got more ideas for composition!

 

[xfloggingkylex]

cool pictures and very fitting for an electrical engineer

I have been DYING for the first lightning storm here.

 

[Visciom]

Looks incredible! I really like the second pic.

 

[ClarkKent]

Wow, great captures. I can't wait till our next storm so I can go out and try!!