How to Capture lightning, A mini how to.

[Nathan deGargoyle]

Very easy to correct with GIMP (free) Piknik (free) or Photo$hop (not even close to free)

30 seconds in Picnik gave me this

[greenmantle]

Originally Posted by rikkersc

How do you get the sky color to be more on the blue side, as in the examples so far in this thread?
When I take lightning shots my sky is always black. Or, in a few of them the sky had a sepia tone to it. Like the one below:

You can shoot in a whitebalance mode that pushes the hue towards blue, it changes for most camera types as to the colour mode they call it, and alternatively you can choose the white balance temp you want to make the most of the sky colour.

I post process my RAW shots in Adobe Lightroom as a batch to ensure that all of my shots (especially if I plan on merging them) have the same whitebalance. Lightroom is far cheaper than photoshop and does enough for me that I usually only need to open photoshop if I am merging shots or retouching models.

[Osprey]

There's no hard and fast rule on aperture for lightning photos, but a good start is at f/5.6. As the lightning get closer and brighter then drop down anywhere up to f/11.

Here's just one of many shots that I've taken:



The rest can be found in my website gallery under Weather.

[rikkersc]

Nathan,
it says your image is unavailable. I'd be interested to see what it looked like.

[kirbinster]

Osprey - that is an amazing shot!

[balikian]

I'm just jealous of those of you who live in areas that get lightning. Unfortunately, I live in a town (seattle) that when it lightnings, everyone freaks out like something really exciting is happening. It took me about 7 years after I moved here to start freaking out about lightning! ha ha. But seriously, we get maybe 2 chances a year at lightning. I gave it a shot one night, but nothing really came out. I got mostly lighting between clouds that was too far off, so just had a very exposed sky. I appreciate the mini-tutorial, though. thanks!

[kippy]

Originally Posted by rikkersc

How do you get the sky color to be more on the blue side, as in the examples so far in this thread?
When I take lightning shots my sky is always black. Or, in a few of them the sky had a sepia tone to it. Like the one below:

When using RAW format in conjunction with, lets say, Photoshop Elements 5, you can change the colour temperature. Therefore, the sky in the shot could be reduced to a blue. This is handy for me, because we have a lot of light pollution in my town.
Not so sure about other software and if it is possible to do the same with a jpeg, shall find out

[rikkersc]

I have Elements 5, but rarely shoot in RAW...something I have to still work on.
I was able to fiddle around with a photo and turn it to more of a blue. I also turned one quite purple, I think it is in another link on this site somewhere, and sold that one at a show this past weekend! YEA!

[Hrshycro]

OK so can someone dumb down the 1st post to a new kid on the block thats 15 with a D40 so that i can understand it? plz?

[windrider86]

I'm dying to try this but its winter so I doubt we'll have any lighting for another 6 months or so.............