Lightning

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Permalink Reply by sood on June 24, 2009 at 11:08pm

just don't get hit by one! :-) Here a good site for lightning tips: http://www.weatherscapes.com/techniques.php?cat=lightning&page=...

I've got a 350d (the European name for the rebel range ) so I'm always looking at accessories, and I once came across a type of weatherproof hood that goes around the whole camera and your head and had covered holes for your arms to go into - it was primarily for sound proofing, but it was also weatherproof for outdoor use as well. Cant for the life of me remember the name of it though.

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Permalink Reply by Prabir Kumar Bhattacharyya on June 25, 2009 at 5:33am

Haven't tried capturing lightning. But may be you can try multi-burst or bracket shooting. It might work. In case it works please let me know. I'll also try when I get an opportunity.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Brown on June 26, 2009 at 11:11am

Hi. I live in NW FL and love taking pictures of lightning. It seems that timing and the approach of the storms have a lot to do with the success of lightning shots being possible and turning out well. First I assume that you want to do this at night? For me what has worked best is to find a location where the storm will be approaching over a body of water or where you will have a decent amount of open sky and something that even without the lightning you would want to have a picture of. I try to be under some sort of cover like a gazebo or even under a tree or something helps a little to keep the rain off. The biggest thing that helps about an approaching storm is most of the time the rain is not yet a factor so you don't have water drops on the lens or a wet camera to deal with. You may have a limited time for you to be able to capture pictures this way, but I think nearly every picture I have gotten that was decent was taken during this time. I take several pictures at different settings to find which one exposes the background properly. Because lightning is so hard to time I find that longer exposures help to increase the chance that one will happen while your shutter is open. The problem is that this also can cause the background light to overexpose, which is why I take a few shots and look to see how the picture looks without the lightning so that when I do capture a strike the rest of the picture will look good too. Sometimes the longer exposure enhances things too like lights around a dock shining into the water. You just have to try each location and see what works. You can also use multiple exposure shooting when you depress the shutter and let it take many shots in a row hoping that one will contain lightning strikes. I have not been as successful at this method as I have at the longer exposure. There are also devices that sense light flashes and will trigger the camera when a flash is detected (Google "lightning detector"). The hope here is that there are multiple flashes of lightning and the subsequent flashes will be captured when the camera triggers. These are a little expensive for my budget so I do not own one yet.

A tripod is also a must when you are doing the longer exposures because the shake of depressing the shutter or any other movement will blur the background lights. I like to use my one second timer so that when I depress the shutter it will wait 1 second then take the length of exposure I have set. This just eliminates any shake and since I am not trying to capture a strike when I see it it does not matter that there is a delay. I do not have a remote shutter release, but this would help improve your picture as well if you did not want to use the timer.

I also found this site which has helped my see what is approaching when thunderstorms are forecast and where it would be best to position myself in hopes of capturing an approaching storm.

Keep in mind that standing out in a lightning storm is extremely dangerous so there is some risk to this type of photography. This is why I try to do it from a distance and when the storm is overhead I try to be in my vehicle or someplace safe. No lightning picture is worth dying for or leaving your family without you because you made a bad choice to be out in bad weather.

I am no pro at this, but if you would like to ask more questions I would be happy to try to answer any that you have.

Jeff

Here are a few I have captured. The next three are the only thing I captured on a night where I took over 200 shots. Lots of great strikes out over the Gulf of Mexico. None happened to be in the frame when the shot was taken. Two strikes I did get were blurry because I made an error in the manual focus settings when I changed how I was taking the pictures. The one lightning shot I did get the camera was no longer zoomed in so I got a good strike, but it was way off in the distance.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Mariano on July 3, 2009 at 9:31pm

this took me like 100+ shots... i guess it took me some time for this one. if i remember, ive used manual, ISO-200 shutter speed- 1/20 and apperture f5.6 and also a whole lot of patience... by the way im just at my window waiting for this lightning... hehehe

Attachments:

• lightning.jpg, 1.3 MB

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