As the storm clouds were building up in the northeast yesterday afternoon, I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed that way. This storm had some strength as the tail winds were quite powerful making it difficult to steady the camera. There were lightening strikes in the mists of the clouds which gave me an idea on capturing them. I decided to make an experiment with my camera using the interval timer. I closed my aperture down to f22 and set my ISO to 200 to get as long an exposure as I could for each shot. I then was set up my camera to shoot an image every 5 seconds for as many images as I wanted.  No such luck but I think it will work and I’ll try it again some time. Has anyone ever done this before? I did enjoy my time away from the city noise and watching nature show off.
Next week I will be house sitting for a couple of friends in their straw bale house and 40 acres of prairie. Just me and the chickens for a week at The Prairie House.
14 Comments
Steve Skinner
Incredible!
Monte Stevens
Yes, it was.
Tom Dills
Great photo and story about the storm. Can’t wait to hear the stories and see the photos from the straw bale house. Sounds like an interesting experience!
Monte Stevens
Thanks,Tom. I am excited to have a chance to spend the time at their place. Not sure how many people, or even myself, can spend a week alone in a place of quiet and solitude. Looking forward to exploring some of the area and those sunrises and sunsets.
E.Brooks
Beautiful photo!
I’ve seen some Lightning Detectors that automatically fire you shutter at the very beginning of a lightning strike. I think they were mainly for D-SLR cameras but reviews said they worked because they could detect the very beginning of a strike so your exposure captured most of the full strike. I like your approach too. I would think you’re going to get some cloud movement as well if the exposure time is very long.
Have a great time with your solitude adventure. When I was in the USAF stationed in Italy I house sat for some friends out in the middle of no-where. It was interesting and I really enjoyed it. A lot of good quality reading and contemplation…I was kind of sorry when they returned a week later. 🙂
Monte Stevens
I’ve heard of those but never purchased any. We have enough lightening around here to probably justify the purchase, if’n that is what you want to photograph. Yes, the clouds do move on the longer exposures. I also found it quite interesting to see the sequence of cloud movement when a shot it made every 5 seconds. 🙂
Paul Maxim
Based on your aperture setting (f/22) I’m guessing that you weren’t using any kind of ND filter, Monte. To me, that’s the best way to capture lightning. Use a fairly strong ND filter (like 6 to 10 stops) and set your ISO and f-stop so that you can get an exposure time of about 30 seconds. I’d also stay away from extremely small apertures (like f/22) simply to avoid diffraction problems. With a strong enough ND filter you should be able to get to f/8 or even f/5.6. If you can avoid foreground objects, you can focus at or near infinity before you mount the ND filter. If you want a foreground object, then I’d try to stay around f/11 or so. Of course, even at a 30 second exposure you might not get any lightning strikes. But if it’s a good storm and you’re patient, the odds are definitely in your favor! I’ve never used a “lightning detector” but in my opinion they’re not really necessary. The key variable is the 30 second exposure.
Monte Stevens
I never thought of using ND filters, Paul. I only have GND filters, a 2 and a 3 that I can combine and not sure how they would work. I may be able to slide them down far enough to cover the complete lens. We had some heavy lightening south of us last night but the sky just lit up rather than seeing strikes. Thanks for the info.
John
I have tried that type of time-lapse shooting, but I plan to. I did get a 10-stop Neutral Density filter, and downloaded a free Exposure app to help with exposure settings. Works pretty well, but you need to make sure you cover the viewfinder – I found that out the hard way with some really “nice” horizontal lines across the bottom of the image where the light sneaked in.
Very nice image as it is!
Monte Stevens
Thanks, John. I’m getting lots of help here. Love it!
Mark
I am envious of the big open space you have out there. Perfect for storm watching. Guess we will be seeing a lot of chicken photos soon? 🙂
Monte Stevens
I’ll post a bit about the “ladies” later on. I love the open space and am drawn more to it than the mountains. I would also probably be drawn to coast like you have. Now that’s dome open space.
Cedric Canard
Excellent photo Monte. I use to take loads of lightning photos years ago and everyone above has pretty much described the methods. My method involved a ND filter (the strength of it depended on the time of day. No need for one at night time of course), ISO set to 100, an aperture of f11 or f13, covered viewfinder (I don’t think that matters in the age of EVFs), and a remote release with the camera set to Bulb. I aimed for exposures to be as long as possible, sometimes four or five minutes. What this allowed for was a photo with multiple lightning strikes in the frame which always got a “wow!” reaction from people. Another thing worth remembering (actually this applies for any photo taken with a tripod but more so for long exposures) is to turn off any image stabilisation mechanism either in camera or in the lens.
Monte Stevens
You’ve given me more ideas and want to try this again. We had some heavy lightening the other night but not strikes. It was distant enough to just light up the sky. I’ve also made the mistake in the past of not turning off the stabilization before. Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t do it again. 🙂