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Hi all,

Had my first 'crack' (pun intended) at lightning pics last week.

According to Raydar, our resident storm expert, this is a rare form of lightning called Ground to Cloud. As I watched and photographed it I noticed a major bolt come down and then a network of striks branch out from the top of the strike, accross the underside of the clouds.

Anyway, have a look. All feedback welcome (especially if anyone can tell my why the colours go the way they do). Only PP work was slight levels and croping.

http://www.pixspot.com/thumbnails.php?album=188

that third shot is spectacular... i am very impressed... well done.

Craig also like the third, well caught

Craig I think all three are fantastic - well done even tho’ you were naughty

'The beauty' certainly lives up to its name.

Awesome pics mate... thanks for posting.

WOW!!!!

Truly sensational lightning pics mate.

It almost looks like a tree made of plasma and electrons.

The colours are great too. Especially in that first image.

The bolts almost look like they have intelligence.

Impressive Again, I think I like the third best, although all three are really good captures - well done.

I think it's about time Gary gave us a Lightning category!

The D70 certainly does this subject justice eh

Craig, Mate they are bloody magic, I can only hope when i get the chance they come up 1/2 as good as yours have for a first try.
Well done.
Cheers
John

Awesome shots, I'd be very interested to know how you did it; ie, did you see the lightenings in the viewfinder before pressing the shutter?

The brightness of the colours remains a mystery to me, especially on the left of the first frame, at the level of the horizon line (it looks very bright, maybe a lightening hit the earth just outside the frame).

Link.

My son and I set up the D70 in his bedroom and I gave a camera lesson to sooth the storm fears that night. I think it would have been a lot more effective if I had caught some shots like this.

I ended up catching one measly little tail. Had shutter between 4 and 20 seconds, but everytime the shutter closed the lightning would flash. It got so crazy my son started laughing at me every time I missed one Oh the shame!

Great shots mate. At least I know I had the camera setup roughly right.

I also like all three shots. They are all great!

Keep the lightning shots coming!

Thanks all for the kind words. I think the distinct advantage in these images was the lightning on the night. It was very hard to get it wrong. Lots of spectacular strikes and a great vantage point 200m down the road from my house.

Link wrote:Awesome shots, I'd be very interested to know how you did it; ie, did you see the lightenings in the viewfinder before pressing the shutter?

The brightness of the colours remains a mystery to me, especially on the left of the first frame, at the level of the horizon line (it looks very bright, maybe a lightening hit the earth just outside the frame).

Link.

Link,
You guessed it.
The brightness on the left of the first frame was from another strike that I cropped out of the shot. Why it threw orange light while the main strike has purple totally beats me. Here is the strike here....not cropped out.....


In terms of how I got the shots, settings etc. The first shot f5 and the 2nd and 3rd f7.1. I noticed that with decent (bright) strikes a range between f5 and f8 returned good results. As for the shutter speed I had the camera set to bulb and kept the shutter open until there was a decent strike. As an indication of how frequent we were getting good strikes the first shot was 8.2sec, second shot 1.7sec and third shot 4.9sec.

didn't use a tripod (for no good reason - just too lazy and had to manage squals of rain now and again) so to improvise I took padding and used jumpers on the wound down window of my car to stabilise when using bulb. I did catch the second strike after I first saw it hit, but my reflexes were too slow to pull that off more than once.

I only used the viewfinder to compose the horizon and take note of where the edges of the frames were on the landscape. This was so I could get into a better position to stabilise the camera and see what was going on.

A little improvisation, the advantage of imediate feedback (review of images) thanks to the D70 - and one heck of a good light show that made it hard to miss.

Cheers,

Wow great pics!! I love them all.

Very nice shots.

I need to find a good spot to sit out and have a go next storm.

Wow, that is awesome! The colors are captivating...

Cheers,
Mudder

I need one of those remotes I think.

amazing stuff! 1st one gets my vote! Great!

Great ! Great ! Great !

What more can one say but, Great !

Well done

Mic

my better half says im a maniac when i shoot lightning. she freaks, but you would be very unlucky to get hit under cover of my balcony. its a great feeling when the sky arcs up not far away. these pics you took are fantastic. radar will be jealous i dont think hes had much action this week.

Simply beautiful