Your Best Lightning Shot to date...

[Laney Cole]

While I was capturing a severe warned storm on my iPhone, I managed to catch a remarkable old-fashioned backyard lightning bolt in action. It was quite a sight - nothing like the beautiful classics shared on this post, but was no less stunning to me. The darn thing almost broke my phone, but I was so excited that I was yelling throughout the house, "I caught a gorgeous CG." Enjoy!

 

[Jonathan Scrogham]

Lightning photography with an iPhone is pretty terrible, but this one turned out all right. I’ll probably invest in a DSLR or mirrorless camera later down the road.

 

[Mike Dorame]

Almost looks like some ball lightning up in there.

 

[Christine Veerkamp]

For me, not located in the USA and limited to my activity in my near-home Area, I had the rare opportunity to chase a Storm with somebody. This was my first Chase ever, and it became an experience I will never forget.

Also a little Video experiment I did I got a big CG surprise

 

[James K]

Finally got around to looking through/editing (& preparing for YouTube) some stuff from last month.
This one is a frame-grab from video taken evening of Aug 21.
Wasn't a real active or large storm, but did drop a few nice CG's

 

[Steve Frederick]

Lightning captures. April 17, 2025 Mankato Minnesota

 

[Dan Robinson]

Great to see this 15-year thread still going. Here are some since I last posted. It took me 10 years and ~150 attempts, but I finally got the Gateway Arch lightning strike still photo I was after on July 19, 2020. Th Arch was struck 3 times that night. I captured another on June 30, 2023. I have at total of 6 now on my various cameras since 2014.



My obsession now is shooting slow motion lightning footage with a Chronos 1.4 high speed camera. It does 1,500 fps at 720p resolution, and faster framerates via sensor cropping. I've been shooting mainly at 1,500 fps @ 720p and 6,002 fps @ 640 x 354. It can go up to 40,000 fps, but the frame size at anything higher than 10,000 fps is too small to be of much use for shooting lightning. I've done a few shoots at 10,034 fps (496 x 268 resolution) but the exposure times are so short that even bright daylight scenes are almost pitch black, and lightning needs to be close to show up well.

Here are a few favorites:

From the 2020 storm in St. Louis - captured 2 of the 3 Arch strikes at 1,500 fps and the third on the DSLR:

 

[Markus Pfister]

These two taken on October '23 in Sestri Levante, Italy.

 

[G Diaz]

Backyard shots.