[teddyfingers]

I live in Florida the storm season will be coming upon us in a month or two. I was wondering if you all would have any tips for shooting lighting. I will be able to get plenty of practice as we get more lighting strikes here than anywhere else in the US.

Teddy

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Teddy,

I've never attempted photographing lightning before, but next time we get a storm I'd love to try too. We have some high-voltage powerlines visible from my backyard which seems to attract lightning and have put on some spectacular shows in the past.

I would imagine that you could treat lightning photography in much the same way as flash photography, just that you can't control where and when the lightning will strike.

Assuming you want to expose the landscape as well as the lightning itself, I'd suggest treating the situation as you would if you were taking the scene using a fill-in flash.

At a guess, I would imagine the best results would be obtained by going for a very long shutter speed (ie at least 8 seconds I would imagine at night). This would not only maximise your chances of actually capturing a strike in the frame, but also by balancing the aperture and ISO to properly expose the scene at a long shutter speed, a brief flash of lightning (hopefully) wouldn't blow out the whole scene when exposed over such a long time (so you will see the forks of lightning themselves, not just a big white flash)
It all depends a bit on the brightness of the scene I guess (ie whether the storm is at night or day), but I'd imagine the best shots would be at night.
Stick the camera on a tripod, grab a wide-angle lens, close the aperture up tight and pick a long shutter speed. Obviously you won't be able to react fast enough to wait for the lightning and *then* take the photo, so you'll just have to take pot-luck and hit the shutter a few seconds before you expect a strike. If you are using auto-exposure, you will probably have to use exposure compensation to underexpose a bit to allow for the extra light generated by the strike itself... and then I guess it comes down to a lot of trial and error. If you find with, say, an 8 second exposure that the lightning dominates the scene more than you'd like, then go for a longer shutter speed (and close up aperture and/or lower ISO), if you find the lightning forks appear weaker than you'd like, then go for a faster shutter speed (and open aperture/raise ISO).

Can anybody with any actual experience in this shed any light here?

Edit: A quick google search brings up loads of valuable info. Forget what I said, real what some people say who actually know what they're talking about
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=...tning&meta=

Let us know how you go. This is something I'd love to try.

Cheers
Adrian

[shuttertalk]

Hey there, haven't done it myself either, but there was a thread on ST before about it...

http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1416

My tip would be to try to stay away from other existing ambient light - e.g. street lights or buildings, otherwise the lightning won't be as bright.

[Peted]

I took some out my back door some time ago, use similar technique to shooting fireworks.

B setting if you have it or long (30secs), low ISO, infinity focus (manual), aperture depends but not stepped down too much, try F8 to start with.