Lightning Photography - What to look for in a camera

[Oliver W]

I am looking to further my skills in lightning photography. I really enjoy it when I get the opportunity but I feel like my equipment isn't up to par. I don't have a DSLR camera or anything fancy and I'm looking to buy one for my birthday this month! What should I be looking for in a DSLR camera for lightning photography? Are there any good cameras that you know off the top of your head that would be good? My max budget is about $400 and I am more the willing to buy used or refurbished!

 

[Josh Hoover]

I use a Canon EOS 60D for my primary camera, with a standard 18mm-135mm kit lens. Which was given to me by my dad once he phased it out with a newer camera for his photography business. I'm not sure how much one goes for used, but I'd imagine it might be cheap considering it's 13 years old. But basically, to capture lightning, you want to find a camera that has a good enough light sensor for low-light applications. Kit lenses are fine, you don't really need anything fancy. I'd recommend shooting in manual focus rather than auto focus, and to make things a little easier on you, try and find a DSLR that shoots video as well. Because, you can then go into Premiere Pro or some other video editing software and go frame by frame to take still images. Oh and get a tripod to help stabilize the camera while shooting.


This is one of the lightning shots I took on my Canon EOS 60D. iirc I was shooting at an ISO of 400, an aperture of F8 (might've lowered it to F6.5 at this point in the evening), and a shutter speed of....1/25? maybe 1/50, I can't remember. Now, this picture and some of my other pictures from this same storm were pretty grainy which tells me next time I find myself in this same lighting situation, I need to lower my ISO a smidge. but yeah, I'm sure you can get similar shots like this with similar settings on something like a Canon Rebel T7. Might even be better than this shot honestly, and T7's are pretty cheap as they're a beginner DSLR.

 

[gdlewen]

There is a lot of information in the Tips-Tricks-Equipment forum here on StormTrack.

But for lightning you really can't go wrong with any of the DSLR's post 2010 or so. I'm not sure when DLSR's started applying the proper gamma correction to emulate the logarithmic response of film--maybe I just couldn't afford a good one prior to 2010, and my poor Nikon CoolPix 950 just couldn't handle the range of intensities presented by lightning, between faint branching and the main channel. I have a Nikon D60 that does a great job with lightning. More than adequate.

Having said all of that, you will never separate me from my Pentax K1000 film camera. You may not want to be in the "film space", but with a fine grain, slow film and shutter release cable for Bulb-setting shots you can get really great pictures and no need to "read the manual."

 

[gdlewen]

As a follow-up to my post--here is a side-by-side comparison between a Pentax K-1000 and Nikon Coolpix 950. In this case I was trying to document the difference between the two cameras. The superiority of film, with its logarithmic response to intensity, is obvious. (As a footnote: the lightning channel that passes off to our left was a cloud-air discharge that was apparently triggered by the cloud-to-ground flash.)

The Coolpix 950 creates a single JPG over which the user has very little control--virtually none. Better cameras (like the Nikon D60 I bought about 5 years later) offer the option to save a RAW image file, containing the raw photosensor values, which you can then process using various image processing programs.