I need advice for lightning photo's

[kgreen]

Do you have any good lightning photo's to share? I only had a short time to practice tonight, the storm passed pretty quick. But to be honest I don't think I got even 1 decent shot. I didn't do my homework I guess! I'm going to have to do some reading, but I thought I'd ask here first.

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

I don't know if it was right or wrong, but I used the bulb mode. (similar to fireworks, tripod, remote, etc.). I watched the storm roll in and manually focused to an area where I thought it be and closed the shutter when it struck. It seemed to work. You can view the exif info by clicking on the photo and going to my Flickr site.


Lightning 6 by Gianna'sPapa, on Flickr

 

[kgreen]

Your photo is fantastic! I just finished reading a good article on how to photograph lightning, now I just need a storm.
I have such a hard time manually focusing, & I don't have a remote control or shutter cable release yet. But the rest is easy enough to understand.
Here's the link for the article I read:
http://www.weatherpaparazzi.com/content/how-photograph-lightning

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

For this, it is a rather simple manual focus. Focus it to infinity then back it off slightly. With a f-stop of 8-11 it should work just fine. Its what I use for fireworks. I also have a problem with the dslr manual focus. With our film slr it was easy because the focus screen was different (cat's eye). You can change your focus screen in your camera, but then, I have heard, it may have a problem with auto-focus. Its a double-edged sword.

 

[Frantasmic]

I went out once, just to see if I could do it. I used the suggestions here on this forum.


Lightning Aug 09 027 by msf61, on Flickr

Manual focus. Tripod mount. F8.0. 1.5 - 3 second shutter.

What many don't say though is to wait until the storm passes and see if you can get the backside of the lightning. You don't worry about rain or anything.

This shot is from the parking lot of a medical building about 2 blocks from my house. It was a small cloud that was just really charged. It allowed good access to the sky and turned out fairly ok for what I was trying to do.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

I took a few back in August when I had more free time at work. We had a few bad storms roll through and I came close to getting hit twice the last night. The color that the skies turned was amazing all night.

Pretty sure this was reverse lightning where it went from the ground to the shy.....

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

I took a few back in August when I had more free time at work. We had a few bad storms roll through and I came close to getting hit twice the last night. The color that the skies turned was amazing all night.

I know what you mean. My earlier post was one of about six shots as the storm advanced toward me. After the last close shot, I decided standing next to an extended aluminum tripod wasn't the smartest thing to do and packed it in! I accomplished what I wanted and checked it off my bucket list. I may attempt it again in the future, but it did make me very nervous. It likes fishing in a thunder storm with a graphite rod, not very smart!!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

I know what you mean. My earlier post was one of about six shots as the storm advanced toward me. After the last close shot, I decided standing next to an extended aluminum tripod wasn't the smartest thing to do and packed it in! I accomplished what I wanted and checked it off my bucket list. I may attempt it again in the future, but it did make me very nervous. It likes fishing in a thunder storm with a graphite rod, not very smart!!

You got it For a good amount of my shots the one night, I opened the hatch of my SUV and set the tripod up inside the car with me huddled next to it. The storm took a while to come in and the light show was extremely entertaining. Before I knew it, the rain came down with a vengeance all at once and lightning hit about 300 feet from where I was. Luckily I didn't have to get out of the car and I drove back to the other side of our building.

As I ran out of the car I was instantly SOAKED. I ran up the METAL steps to open our METAL door and had to badge in with our ELECTRIC card reader. As soon as I had the door open 1/2 way a bolt smashed the ground about 150 from where I was. This is around 1am. People came out of the office because it sounded like a wall just fell on me (yes, I screamed a bloody murderous involuntary but manly scream)

2 hrs later I was still shaking on the way home.

 

[alloyd1170]

Here's a helpful article at B & H Photo Video:
http://www.bhinsights.com/content/how-photograph-lightning.html

And this for Christina's shots (Amazing!) http://www.shotbychristina.com./