I caught a photo of some lighting from my back porch just before a storm last week. It was actually a little harder than I thought it was going to be, and I’m going to have to really practice a bit more in the future.
This strike was photographed using a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens. ISO was set at 100 and the exposure was 5 seconds.
Lightning Strike Picture
Click through on that image for a larger view, or if you would like access to the full size version, I posted it over on Flickr.
How man how do you get hold of such rare sights with such professionalism?
That’s sweet, John! So did you have to take it ….like…sort of – before it hit? Kind of? Or is that super badass camera of yours just instant? That’s a really great shot!!
I remember standing out in the field that is my backyard for about a half an hour one evening with the camera on the tripod the aperture pushed all the way up and the ISO pushed down taking 30 and 40 second exposures trying to get a good lightning capture…out of a couple of hundred shots I might have gotten 3 with good lightning flashes. It is kinda funny how most flashes happen in a direction other than the one the camera is pointing toward.
The best of the bunch I posted here…After The Storm II
Thanks for showing me up Gary, yours is way better than mine! ;-)
hehehe
John P.
Lisa,
I actually used a combination of mainly two things to achieve this shot:
Beyond that, it was just blind luck that I happened to get a flash during one of the exposures. Now that I know how to do it though, I’ll refine and improve on the technique the next time it looks like rain.
John
So how many pictures does that mean you ended up taking in that one setting?
I took over 100 to capture this one. So you figure that’s like at least 1,000 seconds. That was about all of my window of opportunity before it was gone.
John
How do you always get these great shots? I wish I had the luck you have when it comes to being in the right place for pictures.
It’s impressive that your camera didn’t get wet. Nice photos.
Great, unusual picture. It’s really difficult to catch a lightning.