Basic Guide to Shooting Lightning

[James Langford]

I wrote up this small tutorial for another thread, and thought I would post it here to help others out. You can see my lightning shots on my site listed in my sig below. Here's my general strategy for shooting lightning:

* Shoot with a tripod and remote control.
* If your shot includes any bright lights (like cities, etc) and if you have a DLSR, use Mirror Lock Up to avoid any motion blur in longer exposures. This makes a huge difference, IMO.
* Find a location with interesting foreground (city, trees, lake, etc)
* Use a wide angle lens to capture more of the interest of the storm
* Determine the movement of the storm so you know where best to point your camera
* Always shoot at ISO 100 for the least amount of noise. There are very few times that I will break this rule. In very rare occassions you may want to increase your ISO if the lightning is very very faint, or to control the scene.
* Shoot in Manual Mode so you can control the shutter and aperature.
* Pre-focus your camera before starting to shoot (I generally use infinity for lightning type shots) using Manual focus. Don't trust your auto focus, especially in dark scenes. Lock your camera in Manual focus so the focus won't change.
* Normally you can use auto White Balance and get good results. I shoot in RAW, so it's easy for me to adjust the WB after the fact. You can set the White Balance for whatever type of scene you are using, and the lightning will still look good.
* Use the brightness of the lightning to determine your F-Stop. If the lightning is very bright, F16. If not so bright, F8. If very dim then F4 or lower. I think for almost all of the shots above I shot around F8.
* Expose the scene at your given FStop by changing the shutter speed. Take a few practice shots till your scene looks good WITHOUT the lightning. Then when you get a strike, everything in the overall scene will look good.
* If you are shooting a very black scene, you could consider using "Bulb" mode on a DSLR if you have a remote. This will allow you to manually open and close the shutter for strikes. However, anything longer than 30 seconds or so will start to introduce bad noise and hot spots on most cameras.
* Another thing to think about is using an Intervalometer type remote control, or something to do Time Lapse. I have one of these for my Canon's, and just set it to repeatedly take shots one after the other.
* Just keep shooting! Digital is cheap, right? I generally just take one pic after the other without stopping. If you have a camera with Noise Reduction, you'll have to wait till that is done to take your next picture.

Hope this helps!

James

 

[Chris Bowman]

Thanks for post. I was putzing around the other night messing with my ISO and aperture settings. Unfortunately all the lightning was incloud from my vantage point so all I got was an illuminated outflow boundary moving through. The ISO and F-stop numbers should save me some time experimenting.

 

[Gerrit Gulden]

Another thing I do when I am getting ready to shoot some lightning is counting the seconds between lightning strikes. Basically this will determine my Exposure length.

1. If lightning strikes every 25 seconds I use a 30 second exposure. After counting for 2 bolts I will press the shutter 5-10 seconds after the last bolt to give my 30 seconds a better chance of catching the lightning.

2. on my Camera I have a 64 second exposure option. Sometimes lightning will be every 45+ seconds, I set to 64 seconds and cross my fingers, usually out of 10 photos I will have at least 4-6 with lightning.

3. When you have a storm that is putting out alot of lightning go down 15 seconds or less. Again count the seconds in between bolts and adjust accordingly.

Remember, some cameras, especially Point and shoot will have long processing times for long exposures. My Kodak Easyshare Z730 with a 64 second exposure takes anywhere from a minute or more to process the image. I plan to get a DSLR very soon.

Best storms for lightning are High based dry thunderstorms IMO. Most of my shots were taken with these types of storms, the problems with Heavy Rain Tstorms is that lightning will be occluded in the rain 80% of the time. With heavy rain storms I just set my camcorder on record and then review my video with a Video editor that has Frame grab abilities.

Also you want to Understand your F-stop and what it does. The lower F-stop will allow more light, Higher F-stop will prevent excessive light. Basic rule of thumb..

1. If lightning is pretty close use F-6 and higher. Determine proper setting when your able to review your photo after processing. If you cant see much, lower the f stop, if there is too much light (overexposure) then increase the fstop.

2. If lightning is more than 4+ miles away you might want to use f4 and lower. Again determine whats the right fstop after you review the last photo taken and adjust.


Things you always need......

1. Tripod

2. Extra Batteries (at least 3 or more fully charged)

3. Something to Keep your camera dry if rain starts falling

4. Common sense , keep an eye on the lightning and distance between you and the bolt. If your hearing Explosive bolts only hundreds of yards from you then you need to take cover immediately.




Good luck out there... Be safe...

-gerrit

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

* Another thing to think about is using an Intervalometer type remote control, or something to do Time Lapse. I have one of these for my Canon's, and just set it to repeatedly take shots one after the other.

You should be able to set a camera to continuous shooting mode, set the shutter for up to 30 seconds, then lock the cable release button down and do this. I plan on doing this next time I do star trails anyway(stacking the 30 second exposures). Set it up and go to sleep, let it click away those 30 second shots.

I did a small time lapse the other night of a crapper storm at 2 a.m. I think I was on 400 ISO using the 50mm at F1.8, maybe it was just 200 ISO, I forget. I can't wait to get a better storm and do that again. It was really cool to hold down play on the LCD and watch the storm move, but mostly cool to watch the stars climb. They were 30 second exposures.

And, fwiw, I've had to use 800 ISO at F1.8 for a storm before. Lightning was blood red, buried in rain.

 

[Danny Neal]

This summer is going to be the first summer I attempt to shoot lightning. I just want to thank you all for putting your tips and things to know on there. After that "accidental" shot I took of the CC lightning....you might say I have the bug.