How To Capture A Lightning On Camera

Comprehensive Guide to Photographing Lightning

While attending photography classes at the Academy of Central Florida, I got the thought in my caput that I wanted to go a photo of lightning. Up to that bespeak, I had pretty much focused on sports photography, but wanted to do something different. After several failed attempts, I finally caught my beginning lightning bolt from my driveway. I never looked dorsum from there. Lightning was actually what caused me to fall in love with photography.

Safety First

Make no mistake, lightning is extremely dangerous. It is the most unpredictable element of thunderstorms. The average person has about a 1 in 10,000 chance of beingness struck past lightning, but if you're intentionally going out into thunderstorms those chances increase dramatically. In the commencement half of the 20th century, an boilerplate of about 400 Americans died each twelvemonth from lightning strikes. That number has decreased significantly with an boilerplate of 32 lightning fatalities per yr since 2006. Much of this can be attributed to the National Weather Service'southward efforts on raising awareness virtually the take chances of lightning strikes with their "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors" campaign. The general rule is, if you lot tin hear thunder, you're close enough to be struck past lightning.

Use your caput while doing this kind of thing. If you lot feel uncomfortable, trust your instincts and exit of in that location. Avoid open areas, and try to brand certain you aren't the tallest object around. Besides, be sure you aren't standing about the tallest object around, for example a large tree. If that big object is struck, lightning could travel through the ground or even arc through the air, straight to you lot. One manner of minimizing your exposure is to use devices such as lightning triggers and intervalometers. The bang-up affair about these devices is that yous tin set them up on your camera, and seek shelter in the relative safety of your vehicle. It's all about minimizing the corporeality of time you are vulnerable to being struck.

What You Demand To Photo Lightning

1. A tripod
2. A DSLR or other camera capable of shooting longer exposures.
3. Radar App for your smartphone. (Radarscope is a keen one)
4. A remote trigger (Intervalometer or Lightning Trigger)
5. Rain protection for your camera

Getting Your Shot

Your best shots will usually come from the outer border of the storm. You really don't desire to exist shooting from the cadre of the storm, where all the pelting is. You virtually likely won't exist able to keep your lens make clean enough to get a good shot. Your merely choice at that point is shooting out of your car. If y'all are under the anvil of the storm (where the lightning can sometimes exist brilliant), there may exist light to moderate rain present. In which case you can setup nether an awning of some blazon, utilize an umbrella, or even setup your tripod in your auto. The shot below illustrates anvil crawler lightning, and since it was raining at the time, I setup my camera on a tripod in my motorcar and shot out of the passenger window.

f/13.0
25 seconds
ISO 320

Attempt to etch your shot in an interesting way. It should look good even without the lightning, then once you do get some in the shot, it will add to an already good image. If yous desire your pictures to stand up apart from anybody else'south, observe a compelling foreground. At that place are millions of lightning photos out in that location. What can you do to make yours different?

Ane mistake people often brand is exposing only for the scene and non factoring in the lightning. You want to be certain your lightning isn't overexposed, only at the same fourth dimension you need to accept some light in your foreground to add depth to the prototype. If you aren't already shooting in RAW, you demand to, peculiarly when it comes to lightning. You lot will exist able to recover a lot more details in your shadows and highlights, alter the color balance, and make a host of other adjustments that you lot wouldn't be able to with a jpeg file.

At that place are basically three types of times to shoot lightning, and your technique volition vary depending on which of these times yous are shooting. If you lot're just starting out shooting lightning, I suggest doing so at night. You can utilise long exposures, and shoot continuously, which will give you a much improve take a chance of success than trying to catch lightning during the daytime.

Nocturnal Lightning

To photo lightning at night:

1. Setup your camera on a tripod. Adhere an intervalometer to the camera to eliminate whatever potential camera shake.
   
2. Turn off whatever image stabilization your lens may have.Len stabilization simply creates a vibration to counteract any possible movement by the user, so if your camera is tripodded, it will exist creating a vibration for no reason and may lead to a soft epitome.
   
3. Manually focus your lens to infinity. The all-time style to practise this is by switching to the live view setting on the camera, and zooming in on a distant low-cal source on your LCD screen. Plow the focus ring until the light appears tack precipitous.
   
4. Now to come with your settings. I'm often asked by people what settings they should apply for lightning. Well there'south really no definitive respond to that question. There are a ton of variables to consider that may event what settings you lot desire to use.

• How close is the lightning? Well if it's closer and/or strobing several times, you need to stop downwardly your aperture, and continue the ISO relatively depression to prevent blowout.
• What type of lightning is it? Exposing for close cloud to ground lightning, and afar inner deject lightning calls for dramatically unlike settings.
• How fast are the clouds moving? If a storm is moving very quickly and the lightning is flashing a lot, you will want shorter exposures to avoid ghosting effects (repeated exposures of the aforementioned shape as it moves and the lightning lights it up) in the clouds.
• How much ambience light is in the scene? If there are a lot of vivid lights in your scene you need to have shorter exposures and apply a lower ISO.
• Practise you want to brand a timelapse out of the images? If so, shooting 30 2d exposures won't make much sense, since your timelapse volition probably only last a few seconds. You need to shorten your exposures, by bumping upward your ISO and opening up your discontinuity.

Close Lightning
f/13.0
30 seconds
ISO 100

Distant Lightning
f/8.0
viii seconds
ISO 500

Bright objects in foreground
f/13.0
25 seconds
ISO 200

Fast Moving Clouds
f/8.0
15 seconds
ISO 500

Shooting with a timelapse in mind.
f/half-dozen.3
8 seconds
ISO 640

5. Become a test exposure with some lightning in it. Double cheque to brand sure your shot is properly focused and that your settings are appropriate for the lightning you volition be shooting. There'south null worse than getting the lightning, but it being out of focus or exposed incorrectly. Be sure that you volition be able to recover sufficient detail in the shadows in your foreground.

6. Lock your intervalometer downwardly, and let it continuously shoot. Don't move your photographic camera, so yous can make a timelapse or an paradigm stack out of your images.

Mesocyclone with positive cloud to ground lightning barrage over a field of lightning bugs in Weston, Missouri on June 29, 2014.

Timelapse of a mesocyclone with positive cloud to ground lightning barrage over a field of lightning bugs in Weston, Missouri on June 29, 2014.

42 stacked images for lightning bugs and lightning
f/vi.3
8 seconds each
ISO 640

If y'all exit your photographic camera in 1 spot while shooting, you can combine all of the images into an apocalyptic looking lightning stack. The image to the right was made by using the photos from the timelapse above of a nocturnal mesocyclone in Weston, Missouri. Acquire more than about the process of stacking lightning images (coming soon).

Daytime Lightning

Shooting lightning during this time of day can exist tricky. You have a few options.

To photograph lightning during the day:

1. Setup your camera on a tripod. Attach an intervalometer or lightning trigger to the camera to eliminate any potential photographic camera shake.
   
2. Plough off any image stabilization your lens may have.
   
3. Manually focus your lens to infinity. The best way to practise this is by switching to the alive view setting on the camera, and zooming in on a distant object on your LCD screen. Turn the focus ring until the object appears tack sharp.
   
4. Have a test shot and make sure your foreground has sufficient detail. I propose trying to stop downward to f/sixteen.0, or more than if needed, and setting your ISO equally depression every bit possible.It'southward a common misconception that you need to shoot fast shutter speeds to catch lightning. It'due south the opposite, the longer your lens is open, the more chance of something good happening in it.
   
5. This is where you have a few options on how to become about getting that photograph of daytime lightning.

• The beginning is to endeavor to grab the lightning every bit it happens. You have to react extremely fast to become an prototype of lightning with this technique, and ix times out of 10, even if y'all capture the bolt, you will only catch the return stroke, and not the branching that is visible when the lightning first occurs.
• Another option is to use a lightning trigger. These devices attach to your camera and will trip your shutter when a flash of lite is caught by its sensor. There are a wide array of lightning triggers on the market and they can range anywhere from $60-$400. I have used these in the past, but have gotten away from them recently. I will say that you volition have much more success with shooting lightning during the mean solar day.
• The last option for shooting lightning during the day is to try to close downward your aperture to f/22 or greater, set your ISO to as low equally possible, then fix your shutter speed as ho-hum as possible, and merely shoot continuously. This is probably the best way to go for capturing daytime lightning. The but downfall is your carte du jour will make full up pretty quickly, and your camera may lag if it'south older and has trouble processing all those images.

Handheld. Manually Pressing Shutter
f/10.0
1/60th second
ISO 125

Lightning Trigger
f/13.0
ane/20th second
ISO 100

Stopped Downwards Aperture. Shooting Continuusly
f/16.0
1 second
ISO fifty

Sunrise/Sunset Lightning

This is the best time to shoot anything, and that is especially true with lightning.Y'all can expose for a scattering of seconds with a relatively stopped down aperture, at low ISO and notwithstanding retain tons of foreground detail. Not to mention that sometimes, the colors in the sky can be extraordinary.

To photograph lightning at dark:

1. Setup your camera on a tripod. Attach an intervalometer to the camera to eliminate any potential camera milkshake.
   
2. Plow off any epitome stabilization your lens may have. Len stabilization but creates a vibration to counteract any possible movement by the user, and then if your photographic camera is tripodded, it volition exist creating a vibration for no reason and may lead to a soft epitome.
   
3. Manually focus your lens. The all-time way to practice this is by switching to the live view setting on the camera, and zooming in on a distant light source on your LCD screen. Plough the focus ring until the low-cal appears tack sharp.
   
4. Now to come up with your settings.

• You won't exist exposing for nevertheless photographs of innercloud very much during sunrise/fix. The ambience light will mostly wash it out. You lot're going to focus on bolts of lightning during this fourth dimension, either deject to ground or cloud to deject. Once the sun gets to exist further beneath the horizon, yous will be able to pickup more than of the faint details of innercloud lightning.
• Expose for the overall scene, and and then be certain the lightning won't exist blown out in the image. If the lightning is hit close, you will want to stop your aperture down more. If information technology's distant, you lot can open up up much more.

Shut Lightning at Sunset
f/fourteen.0
5 seconds
ISO 160

Moderately Afar Lightning at Dusk
f/eight.0
twenty seconds
ISO 100

Moderately Distant Lightning at Sunset
f/6.three
half-dozen seconds
ISO 100

Distant Lightning at Dusk
f/5.6
8 seconds
ISO 1000

5. You're going to want to slightly overexpose during this time, specially if shooting timelapse. Information technology will help y'all maximize item in your foreground, and your settings will slowly become underexposed every bit the sun sets further below the horizon.

vi. Take a test shot. Zoom in on the LCD and be sure y'all are in focus and your exposure is proper.

7. Lock downwardly up your intervalometer, and shoot continuously. A lightning storm at sunset or dusk makes for an crawly timelapse.

Source: http://www.jasonrweingart.com/blog/2014/12/20/how-to-photograph-lightning

Posted by: petreecoulth56.blogspot.com

Share this post