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Video Tips: How to Photograph Lightning

Storms and bad weather doesn’t mean you have to stop shooting and go indoors. In fact, sometimes you can get more dramatic images in bad weather. So in this article, we’ve found two video tips to help you learn how to photograph lightning.

Adorama TV – Shooting Lightning

In this video, Mark Wallace gives you the 8 steps he uses to photograph lightning.

Here are the 8 steps Mark recommends:

  1. Set your camera to Manual Mode.
  2. Set your shutter speed to 30 seconds.
  3. Select an aperture of f/10.
  4. Set the ISO to 100.
  5. Shoot in RAW format.
  6. Set your focus on manual mode, and focus just shy of infinity.
  7. Use a wide-angle lens.
  8. Put your camera on a tripod.
  9. BONUS: Use a remote shutter release to trigger the camera.

Lightning Photography Tutorial

Next, photographer Pecos Hank has a great tutorial on photographing lightning.

He covers some of the same tips as the first video, and a few others as well such as the opportunity to also make a time-lapse of your lightning photos.

For other storm photography or chasing tips read:

So get out there and photograph some lightning, but stay safe!

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Darlene Hildebrandt
Darlene Hildebrandt

is an educator who teaches aspiring amateurs and hobbyists how to improve their skills through free articles on her website Digital Photo Mentor and online photography classes. She also teaches all about photo editing using Lightroom, Photoshop, and Luminar Neo and has courses available on all three.

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