Hi Joe,
the main problem is the 1/2 sec shutter speed being the longest that the camera has..
you may have to do many, many 1/2 sec exposures before you jst happen to strike a
lightning discharge within that 1/2 sec exposure period.
I find that doing 15-20 sec exposures that are do-able on my digital cam guarantees that
in an active storm I can easily get one zap captured and often maybe 2-3.
a LONG shutter speed setting is ALWAYS one of my main criteria when buying a new camera
Digital cams ( ie CCD imagers) suffer from thermal noise the longer the exposure is done
the amount of noise and exposure length is governed by 2 main factors
1) the quality of the CCD imaging chip 2) the inbuilt processing software in the camera
as time goes by, technology improvements will reduce the amount of noise seen in longer and
longer digital exposures
( in astronomy ... to overcome this problem ... astrophotographers would take many...
often 12 or more shorter exposure images and them combine (stack) them, in software
to produce an overall equivelent of a 10-20 min exposure
on a SLR film camera where most have infinite time in the 'B' setting, unlimited in the old
totally manual cams or only limited by battery life in the newer ones you can then produce
some of those awesome multi strike images that have surfaced over the years.
one of best that comes to mind was over Kitt Peak observatories in AZ where there were more
than 15 strikes recorded in the one long exposure
( as an aside.... my fellow astronomy friend and I used to do exposures of up to 30 minutes
through the telescope of deep space objects)
hope that gives some insight
Dave N
Sydney
OZ