First Lightning Shot

[Benphall]

Soo a storm rolled through the other day so i figure after many failed attempts at getting some lightning strikes i finally had a technique ready and that would work. was taken on my Nikon D300 32sec / f6.8 ISO100
Lens was my Sigma 10-20

Postproducction work the image was cropped and saturated with a slight tweak in the Hue to app the light purple in the sky.

[WAD]

Nice man.. I took some a few weeks ago. Plan to do more soon (even bought a bigger umbrella).

[RecceDen]

Umbrella!!!!! Thunder and lightning!!!!

Is that wise. I know we go lengths for shots but ......

Den

[mechanic1300]

This was my first attempt. I set the aperture at F22 with a 30 second exposure and just kept exposing every 30 seconds. Managed to get some great shots.

[Michael_2010]

So far I have not been able to capture a decent lightning shot. Has anyone tried one of the triggers available for such things?

Capture the Lightning Landscape with the Lightning Trigger!

If so, is it worth the money?

[precious]

Originally Posted by mechanic1300

This was my first attempt. I set the aperture at F22 with a 30 second exposure and just kept exposing every 30 seconds. Managed to get some great shots.

Great shot! Lightning shots are lucky..but your photos are outstanding. I like the sky blue!

[precious]

Originally Posted by Benphall

Soo a storm rolled through the other day so i figure after many failed attempts at getting some lightning strikes i finally had a technique ready and that would work. was taken on my Nikon D300 32sec / f6.8 ISO100

Mind sharing your technique?

Originally Posted by Michael_2010

So far I have not been able to capture a decent lightning shot. Has anyone tried one of the triggers available for such things?

Capture the Lightning Landscape with the Lightning Trigger!

If so, is it worth the money?

$329 for an accessory! I'll just be patient!

[theosus]

Originally Posted by Michael_2010

So far I have not been able to capture a decent lightning shot. Has anyone tried one of the triggers available for such things?

Capture the Lightning Landscape with the Lightning Trigger!

If so, is it worth the money?

Sounds like cheating to me... but to each his own. How long have you been trying? I find the really great shots are few and far between. I started years ago with film cameras and a cable release. It was nothing to go through four or five rolls in a night, only to get two halfway decent shots. Thankfully the developers worked with me so I didnt pay to print 64 black prints. Digital cameras make it MUCH easier. Review your shots after successful strikes. Are they too bright? Too dim?
Study the storms. Are they horizon to horizon with no visible strikes, just "sheet" lightning? Or are they solitary cells where you can see the sides, and every bolt? Are they active, throwing out strikes every ten seconds or so, or are you waiting a minute or more between seeing anything? Count the average time between strikes, and open the shutter a few seconds before your average hit time. Sometimes the storm is so inactive its not worth it.
I used a canon a620 for a long time, but have a canon t1i now. Turn OFF the long exposure noise reduction. Nothing sucks like taking a ten second exposure, getting nothing, and waiting the ten seconds until you can start another exposure, only to have the most beautiful anvil-crawlers streak across the sky right in the middle of your frame.

And dont worry about getting hit. either you wake up in the hospital, or not at all.

This one was in my front yard looking almost straight up. Rain stopped and anvil-crawlers just kept coming.





Looking down the road next to my house. I dont chase storms any more, I wait for them to come to me. If I get zapped at least the wife can just walk out and start CPR.





Looking across the street again. Its funny the colors you get, from grey to pink to bright blue. The white balance can have a big effect, of course.

[precious]

Originally Posted by theosus

Turn OFF the long exposure noise reduction. Nothing sucks like taking a ten second exposure, getting nothing, and waiting the ten seconds until you can start another exposure, only to have the most beautiful anvil-crawlers streak across the sky right in the middle of your frame.

Good advice and great pictures.

Thanks for the tip. Perhaps, that explains why my camera was taking forever for to get ready for the next shot.

[theosus]

Originally Posted by precious

Good advice and great pictures.

Thanks for the tip. Perhaps, that explains why my camera was taking forever for to get ready for the next shot.

I didnt figure that out for a LONG time. I had to send out a few emails to figure out what it was. It was not an option to turn it off, on the a620. Essentially with noise reduction on, after you take a picture with a long exposure, the camera takes a second picture with the shutter closed, compares the two, and uses the second picture to correct noise in the first. The bad thing is, as you found out, you have to wait to take the next shot, potentially missing out on something. Its also called "dark frame extraction". There is a trade off - sometimes you wind up with bright pixels of light here and there, but in a lightning shot, most of the sky is dark, and the bright spots are easily removed with photshop or any other photo software. I will tweak the brightness, hue, saturation, etc. to approximate what I think I saw, but the eye is easily fooled. And dont delete anything on the camera because it doesn't look like you got a decent shot. Sometimes you can pull out some good stuff from what on your LCD looked like crap.
Just remember to turn it back on after you finish with the lightning, if you intend on taking other long exposures (anything greater than 1 second). The three shots above were all taken with the a620. I havent had enough good storms around me to get good shots with my t1i.