picture questions....

[jshields]

hey everyone- i have 2 seperate questions. first off, in the first 2 pics, what is that darker area just above the ground to the left of the road? common sense and knowledge tells me that it would just be a precip shaft. it was just odd how narrow it looked, and even the location seemed kindof odd. i included a pic of that feature again in the last pic. this was probably about 10 minutes later and the storm was further away, yet it looked the same. like i said i'm sure its a rain/hail shaft, but just thought i would ask the experts
2nd question.... i'm a newbie when it comes to taking lightning pics, and have posted a few questions before. while taking the pics of this storm, i was using the continuous picture taking function on my camera. i tried to leave the shutter open at first but it was too light outside at first. at any rate, i was really going for some good cg lightning strikes, but unfortunately this storm didn't produce alot of them. i did catch 5 of them, but only 2 turned out, shown on my blog. the other 3 looked like the 3rd and 4th pic i've included. any ideas what i would have needed to do different for these strikes to turn out, instead of a blinding white blob?!! thanks again guys!!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Looks like you just needed to close down the aperture a little. Usually for lightning, F8-F10 works best. Lightning strikes can vary greatly in intensity and brightness. Not only that, but closer bolts require different aperture settings than more distant ones. That means you'll almost always have some bolts over/underexposing during a session. You have to decide which bolts you want to expose for (closer, distant, brighter, fainter) and just accept the fact that some will probably not expose correctly.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

What kind of Camera are you shooting with? Is it a P&S or a DSLR?

With my DSLR, When I get a strike that blows out the pixels...Sometimes, depending on exactly how bright they are, I can recover "Some" if not "Most" of the bolt by changing the Exposure Value to the negatives. If you are using a p&s, then you might not be able to recover any of it, due to the image being in .jpg format..... .jpg's just don't give much control when it comes to post processing.

You might try to play around with the image in Photoshop, with the E.V. value....Who knows you might just get lucky!

I hope this helps...

 

[Jim Saueressig]

what is that darker area just above the ground to the left of the road? common sense and knowledge tells me that it would just be a precip shaft.

Actually it's the opposite, The rain shafts are on either side of the darker area and the darker area is the more distant cloud structure visible behind the closer precipitation. precip can often catch the light from the lightning strike better than the clouds around it.

In these from the other night you can see the darker space between the precip shafts but in my case there was just more rain so no structure was visible.

2nd question.... i'm a newbie when it comes to taking lightning pics, and have posted a few questions before. while taking the pics of this storm, i was using the continuous picture taking function on my camera. i tried to leave the shutter open at first but it was too light outside at first. at any rate, i was really going for some good cg lightning strikes, but unfortunately this storm didn't produce alot of them. i did catch 5 of them, but only 2 turned out, shown on my blog. the other 3 looked like the 3rd and 4th pic i've included. any ideas what i would have needed to do different for these strikes to turn out, instead of a blinding white blob?!! thanks again guys!!

You just had the lens open too much. I shoot lightning at ISO 100 and therefore depending on its distance might be anywhere from F:1.4 for distant structure detail to F:5.6 to F:10 for closer strikes. I have let it get so close I have been cranked down to near f:20 but that is attempted suicide...

 

[jshields]

i have a canon powershot sd500. it was originally my wife's, and is a real nice camera, but not what i would like to permanently use. i use photoscape for my photo editing software. it's a real nice free download, but i didn't see anything that i can use to adjust the exposure value. i did already have the exposure value setting on the camera itself to a negative 1.7. the setting on the camera allows it to go to a -2. i'm guessing the camera is a p&s(that means point and shoot right?) the images are in .jpg format. also this camera's aperture settings are automatically controlled from f/2.8 wide angle to f/4.9 telephoto, so it looks like i won't be able to really do anything with the settings that i would need to adjust to take better pics of real close, bright lightning strikes. maybe i'll have to get a better camera for my b-day! thanks again for the help guys!!

What kind of Camera are you shooting with? Is it a P&S or a DSLR?

With my DSLR, When I get a strike that blows out the pixels...Sometimes, depending on exactly how bright they are, I can recover "Some" if not "Most" of the bolt by changing the Exposure Value to the negatives. If you are using a p&s, then you might not be able to recover any of it, due to the image being in .jpg format..... .jpg's just don't give much control when it comes to post processing.

You might try to play around with the image in Photoshop, with the E.V. value....Who knows you might just get lucky!

I hope this helps...

 

[jshields]

Actually it's the opposite, The rain shafts are on either side of the darker area and the darker area is the more distant cloud structure visible behind the closer precipitation. precip can often catch the light from the lightning strike better than the clouds around it.

In these from the other night you can see the darker space between the precip shafts but in my case there was just more rain so no structure was visible.





i see what you're saying now looking at my pics closer! you can faintly see the rain/hail on either side of the darker area. i still think its kindof cool how it looks like a seperate darker area connected to the tower above it. at first my buddy and i thought it was something else!! it was right at dusk when we first saw this so you could see it faintly with your eyes, even when there was no lightning.