Lightning Strike Photograph

ByJohn P.

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
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.

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John P.

John P. is a former CEO, former TV Show Host, and the Founder and Wizard behind Texas Metal Works. You can find him on X, Facebook and LinkedIn. Feel free to send shoutouts, insults, and praise.

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11 Comments

  1. That is a rare photo. I work in the same kind of activity but i supose that was very hard to caught. Well done John.

  5. 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

  7. Lisa,

    I actually used a combination of mainly two things to achieve this shot:

    1. I set my camera to take photos and leave the shutter open for a full 5 seconds. This required full manual control and several other boring adjustments. But the point is, that I was hoping to catch lighting in any 5 second burst.
    2. I used a special remote control for my camera that allows me to set it to take up to 99 consecutive photos, and to set the interval at which it takes them. So I had the remote pushing the shutter release every 10 seconds. While the exposures took 5 seconds, it took a couple more for the camera to save the image and reset for the next 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

  9. 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

  10. 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!!

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