taking lightning pics during the day

[jshields]

hey all- i have started taking lightning pics this spring with the couple of weak little thundershowers that have come by my backyard at night! that's the problem though, is that i have only been able to figure out how to take them at night. if i try during the day, all i get is bright white pic from the shutter letting in too much light(at least i believe that's the problem?) what setting on my camera do i need to change yet to be able to take lightning pics during the day? i have a cannon powershot sd500 so i don't have the fanciest most professional camera, so i am able to set the shutter up to 15 seconds, and the iso from 50 to 400. thanks in advance!!

 

[Stuart Wilson]

During the day there's plenty of light to properly expose your shot with a more 'conventional' shutter speed (say 1/60s). Whatever you do you need to expose for the background.

There are a couple of techniques to take pictures of lightning during the day:-

1) Train yourself to be able to take the picture as soon as you see the lightning (Have camera focused and set-up (use manual focus)). This is hard to do but is possible.

2) Get a trigger that fires the camera as soon as lightning is detected. There is one available from which I've seen very good results.

3) Take lots of pictures and rely on luck

It might be worth looking at using filters to reduce the amount of light getting to the sensor to decrease the shutter speed to allow a similialr technique to night time shooting - I've never seen any results of this but it's worth thinking about

 

[Dan Robinson]

Daylight lightning is best done by reacting to the first sign of a flash and hitting the shutter, using a 'normal' shutter speed that you'd use for the ambient conditions (1/4th, 1/60th, 1/125th second, etc). Lightning is fast, but it usually lingers long enough to react and catch subsequent return strokes. The lightning trigger devices can get nice results, but with some concentration, your own reflexes can do nearly the same thing.

Catching lightning with long exposures during the day is usually not possible. Lightning is 'light', so anything you do to reduce the ambient light exposure (like using ND filters) will also reduce the lightning exposure itself. That said, I've captured close strikes during the day using 3 second exposures at F22. Again, closing the aperture that far will cut down on the ambient light exposure, but it will also simultaneously cut down on the lightning's exposure. Unless the lightning is very close, it will expose as a very thin channel or even not at all at a small aperture.

As the sun sets, you can start with 1 or 2 second exposures and increase that time as it gets darker. At twilight, every situation is different, so you just have to experiment and learn what works best.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

When shooting Daytime lightning, I have had WAY better luck slowing my shutter speed down to say about 1/8 of a second, than I have when I speed it up to say 1/500 of a Second. Also, it is just about impossible to do it w/out a tripod, and cable release. I usually do most of my lightning shooting around 100 ISO, and an Fstop of about F7.1 to F11. I also will leave my cam in Manual Focus mode.

Hope this helps!

 

[Darren Addy]

Yes, you don't want to turn your ISO up. Doing that gives you faster shutter speeds when you want slower ones. Turn the ISO as low as you can, that will give you longer shutter speeds. I'd turn the camera to Aperture Priority mode an select a restricted aperture (like f/8 or f/11 as suggested above).

I also will leave my cam in Manual Focus mode.

That is good advice for DSLRs, but I don't think Point & Shoot cameras have that option, normally.

Alternately you may also want to check out CHDK. CHDK is for Canon point & shoot cameras and does not overwrite your camera's firmware, but puts an alternative system on your flash card. When you start the camera you can then choose to boot "standard" or CHDK.

CHDK has motion detection triggers built-in that captures lightning like this. Best of all, your camera is one of those that is supported if it has firmware version 1.01a and 1.01B (1.01c is supported in beta fashion). The forum has lots of info and help.

 

[Jeremy Perez]

Manual daytime lightning photography can be really frustrating. As everyone has mentioned, longer exposures blow everything out. Shooting from reflexes can be successful for lightning that has a long flicker. Unfortunately, you won't catch the original flash that contains all the stepped leaders that provide the amazing forks. But the bright return stroke channel can still look very nice. I have lucked out a couple times during daylight just shooting manual time lapse images and caught an entire CG, forks & all during one of the exposures.

This is a 1/125 sec shot during monsoon season in Flagstaff:

(There's a larger image here.)

Mostly though, I end up with a whole lot of boring exposures unless I'm trying to compose a time lapse series.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The trigger devices have a slight advantage over human reaction time, but since the first return stroke (the one with the branching) is also the triggering event, the branching stroke will be missed either way.

Fortunately, CGs often occur in 'clusters' in rapid succession, so if you trigger on the first CG, you may catch the branched first return stroke on one of the next CGs in the cluster. Again, electromechanical has a slight edge with this, but human triggering can still do it.

ISO100 and F8 have worked best for me for daytime shots. Basically the same aperture and ISO as nighttime lightning. Regarding shutter speed, I ususally do a few test exposures to get the ambient scene the way I want. I like it to be slightly darker so that the bolts will have better contrast, so I'll go with a slightly faster shutter speed than normal.

 

[jshields]

WOW! thanks for all the quick replies guys, that's why i love this forum. everyone's so nice and helpful! those replies are all helpful. from looking through the manual, i don't believe my camera allows me to change the Fstop though, unless i missed something in the 200 pages it does have a nice feature that takes continuous shots. i just set up that feature and then hold down the button, and it proceeds to take pics fairly fast for as long as i hold down the button. i'll probably try that on my tripod first and go from there!! i might also try that motion detection software as well. i didn't know if there was any magic procedure to daytime lightning pics or if its a lot of luck, but it sounds like the latter

 

[Mike Deep]

I think next time I get the chance I'm going to be really crude and just machine gun 1/8s exposures or something. I just might kill that Rebel's shutter yet!

 

[Tony Laubach]

I typically try to somehow get a darker background in the shot (i.e. a rain shaft or mountains). I find that if I can get those elements, I can usually nab a 2-3 second exposure with the f/stops accounting for the brightness of the lightning. Some ND filters may also enable you to increase shutter time, but I have never used them.

Good luck!

 

[Darren Addy]

The trigger devices have a slight advantage over human reaction time, but since the first return stroke (the one with the branching) is also the triggering event, the branching stroke will be missed either way.

I've recently been reading the patent info and doing a fair amount of research on the breakdown of a lightning bolt and looking at its spectrum in various ways and I can tell you that this is not quite true. The first event is the stepped leader and what you first normally perceive is the first return stroke.

The lightning trigger works by recognizing the stepped leader (which patent papers state are wavelengths between 560-660 nm). I'm assuming that this is why the device has a dark red filter on the front. A Wratten 23A filter (red) blocks out visible light below 560 nm (so the phototransistor's threshold is tripped by the stepped leader - which has nothing to do with the ambient light). This is why the lightning trigger gives you the advantage, especially in daytime. (I'd love to know what phototransistor they are using in that box.) It's triggering it on an event that occurs before your brain recognizes the bolt AND is faster than your reflexes. When the average bolt lasts 100 ms, every millisecond counts.

The lightningtrigger.com web site says that "photogenic" bolts can be captured with cameras with shutter lags of 120 ms or less.

 

[Larry J. Kosch]

I have the same problem in catching sports action shots with my digital camera. I'm always half-second behind the jump shot or game winning TD, etc. I found out that using the continuous shots really catches the action. I did that during a Blue Angels air show that I attended. I used the continuous shots and I got great shots of two Angels approaching each other, then slip past on their flybys. Cool!! I will have to try that set up when I'm out taking cloud pictures and I see lots of lightning!! LJK

 

[Dan Robinson]

The first event is the stepped leader and what you first normally perceive is the first return stroke.

True - but the typical CG's stepped leader process takes less than 50 milliseconds from initiation to return stroke. If a trigger is able to detect the tiny initiation stage of the stepped leader and get the camera shutter open before it reached the ground, then it could theoretically capture the first return stroke. I'd have to look it up, but the last I've heard, the better consumer/prosumer DSLRs had a shutter lag of 60 or so milliseconds. Some pro SLRs are down around 12ms, so they could (in theory) do it as long as the trigger circuit picked up the early stages of the stepped leader within the cloud. Once the stepped leader is below cloud base, you're talking a few milliseconds before return stroke.

In a few cases, CGs can be preceded by a intracloud discharge that subsequently triggers the CG itself. In that case, a trigger device would have more time to get the shutter open. I would guess that most branched CGs caught with triggers were due to either that situation, or capturing a secondary CG discharge rather than the first one. Again, a trigger device does have an edge, but human reflexes can still be sufficient to get some good shots.