Lightning photos

[Thommo]

hey guys, long time no post (stupid dial up)

what are the best settings for lightning, i am having no luck and there are some awesome opportunities for great shots.

thanks guys

[Oneputt]

Thomma I recently had some small success at f8 for 10secs. Set the camera up on a tripod and just keep shooting, you will eventually catch it. It is pointless trying to anticipate.

[Thommo]

thanks, will give that a shot, have been using about 2-3sec atm

[Michael]

Why not expose for longer?

I havent done lightning since I moved to nikon, but if i was going to do it I'd use about f8-9 and expose for about 15 - 20 - 30 seconds at a time or use bulb.

I've got the best spot for this sort of work too though havent had a chance to get out there you basicly can see all the flat plains between toowoomba and warwick, Im also yet to go question the local residents about which way the most active storm come from.

[Raskill]

A great place not to far from you is near Peachester, called Bald Knob. You get a horizon full of the Glasshouse Mountians, very little in the way of buildings and the lightning really hammers the mountains.

I saw a few storms up there 2 years ago beofre I had my Nikon and only a P&S. They were the best storms I'd seen.

Just my two bobs worth.

[darb]

apart from luck in terms of timing and not getting killed, i found myself shootin cycles of 1 to 1.5 minute bulb shots, enough to capture ambient light aswell as a bolt ... and just a waiting game. If i scored a huge bolt, and i was say, 45 seconds through an exposure, id probably give it 10 more seconds and them hit the remote button to close the exposure ... knowing ive caught a ton of light.


Focal length : 28.0mm (35mm equivalent: 42mm)
Exposure time : 68.000 s
Aperture : f/5.6
ISO equiv. : 200
Metering Mode : matrix
Exposure : Manual





Focal length : 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure time : 30.000 s
Aperture : f/5.6
ISO equiv. : 200
Metering Mode : matrix
Exposure : Manual

[the foto fanatic]

apart from luck in terms of timing and not getting killed,

I hope you are standing in the next postcode & leaving the tripod by itself.

[darb]

try standing ontop of a sand dune with a 6ft manfrotto photographing the approachign electrical storm!!

I was standing about 10 metres away with IR remote and stop watch and a little scared, but with a belly full of bourbon, deluded galantry came through

once it got reaaaly close myself and 2 mates with me bolted for the 4wd and headed back to the beach house (which is where the 2nd shot was taken from)

[kipper]

Still love these shots Brad, and these are excellent tips for night time photos of lightning storms.

What would be some tips for daylight where there is a lot of light. You can't really stick it into bulb mode. Unless you plonk on a few ND8 filters.

[darb]

no need to capture ambient light if its already bright i guess, so just do maybe 5 second exposures ... which is a bit more work coz youre constantly retaking a shot, or watching a stop shot if youre using IR remote?

A few ND8's could be good though, if you wanted to capture some motion aswell, like the ocean all smoothed out or something.

im no expert at it, just one night on a boys weekend that storm presented itself upon me

[kipper]

Well with a few NDs on and if it's overcast or cloudy the lightning flash should light up the sky and use the clouds as a reflector. So the landscape should get a fairly good dose of light.

Saw some interesting night photography that some guy did of an approaching storm and it had all the stars captured in the shot with a nice redish hot cloud. It almost looked like the sun but it was lightning.

It'd be nice to get a typical aussie shot of cane fields, wind vane and you know how the rest of the song goes

[darb]

One of my favourite songs too

yeh ... its nice when nature really turns on a show!

[stormygirl]

I've been out and about a fair bit this week with the unsettled weather. unfortunately, the lightning active storms have been happening way too far away to capture anything decent! Here is my first ever lightning picture, (and a rather large crop just to prove it ). I'm pretty much hooked now, so you'll probably see more!

_

I found it was best to experiment. I set my camera to manual focus, shutter on bulb, apeture started out at f8, but I reduced it to f5.6. I found there was a lot of ambient light around which is pretty hard to escape in the city, and was reflected on the moving clouds above. Basically I opened the shutter, waited for a couple of stikes and then closed the shutter. It really didn't help the situation that the storms were probably close to 100km away (too far), and the lightning was mainly CC (Cloud to cloud, not cloud to ground or fork lightning). Exposure times were around the 17 - 30 seconds....I guessed basically! I also started off with the kit lens, but wacked on the 70-300G instead.

If the storms had been closer and with more CG's, I would have been more successful! Now, bring on the next low pressure trough please!!

Thommo, the best thing to do is experiment. At least with digital you can see the results straight away. I couldn't tell you how many I deleted while I was there! I would have wasted rolls of film otherwise!!

Good luck and stay away from powerlines.......

[gecko]

Nice shots all!

Here's my lightening horror story!

I was on a mountaineering trip a few years ago. Access to the peak was via a huge glacier and then across a massive ice sheet - think bare smooth ice for many k's in each direction. Thunderstorm dropped on us while we were as exposed as you could ever be! Lightning striking so close that the acoustic wave could be felt going through your guts. Got our mountaineering tent out and started setting it up - metal tent poles humming and ice axes were buzzing. Climbed inside and waited to die....

To this day I don't know why we did not get hit.
We were unsuccessful with our attempts to climb the mountain and retreated after 5 days.

Gecko