Lightening

[insanefirewall]

Those shots are utterly amazing! Wish we had storms like that here im Michigan all the time!

[shadow-wolf]

Took this during a recent storm, cropped it, cleaned up the noise and increased the contrast slightly.

Pentax K100D, 30s exposure, F11, ISO400 using a tripod and the 2s delay function on my camera. I find the best approach is a long shutter speed to maximise chance of catching a good flash of lightning. Bulb exposure mode would be even better but I don't have a remote release yet. dial the F-stop back to compensate for the long shutter time to prevent over-exposure.

[socom]

I got this one from a cruise ship doing thirty knots in the Carribean with a Powershot A620, ISO auto, white balance auto, pretty much everything in auto.

[cristovao12]

Below are a couple of examples from a vicious storm we had in Calgary, Canada yesterday (June 5th). Funny thing is, I JUST picked up my new remote for my Olympus E500 and right around suppertime, the storm rolled in from the SouthWest. I live on the 15th floor so I set up the tripod, turned it to f22 and used 4-8 second exposures. The rain was extremely heavy so there's a white-wash effect on the shots, plus it doesn't help that 7pm up here is still really bright out, even with cloud cover.




You can really tell the rain is hampering the clarity of the shot in addition to it being slightly overexposed (or maybe far too overexposed). Both bolts hit structures; a crane on the left and a condo on the right. (Taken with the 14-45 kit lens at 18mm focal length, f22, ISO 100, 6 second exposure)



The clarity on this is slightly better. I can't remember if I did an auto correction on the brightness for this shot or not...I believe I did though. Taken with the 40-150mm kit lens at 40mm focal length, f22, ISO 100 with a 4 second exposure.


My question is, was there anything I could have done to help with the overexposure during the day time. I was cursing the storm for not arrving a couple of hours later when the sky would've been darker and allowed me to use longer exposures. I took about 130 shots in an hour and came out with 4 captures of bolts.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Constructive critiques?

[Hagar]

Great lightning pictures guys. And great suggestions also.


I thank you too.