second night of lightning strikes, settings?

[Jayfish]

I missed last night's storms but it's all kicking off again here in the SE, got a gopro running to capture visdeo but hoping to get some digi SLR shots too if my reactions are sharp, what sort of shutter speed, f-stop et al will give the best lightning strike snaps? ~(As you can possibly tell I'm new to proper photography)

[MitchT]

Forget trying to catch lightning with your reactions. I can't give you specific settings as I'm not an expert myself but what I do know is that the pros do it by putting their camera on a tripod and using a long exposure so the strike will be sometime during said exposure. Obviously you don't want to let too much light in so it'll generally be a sequence of 'long' exposures that aren't too long, and fingers crossed that something happens!

If you can excuse the Daily Wail link, this shot was taken by a photographer who had waited 40 years to get his dream photo. I happened to be in NYC that night - it was one hell of a storm!

[Jayfish]

makes sense, just trying to avoid too much saturation as the shot I'm after is from my house across a well lit A road.

[JulianHJ]

Expose for your scene, I would have thought - 30 seconds, ISO and F stop to suit. Open the shutter, hopefully get a few strikes over the exposure period, review (using histogram if you're familiar with it) adjust settings, repeat.

[JSS 911]

Had a quick look on the web as I struggled last night try, f8 iso100 25-30sec as a starter ,tripod or on a solid stable base ,also go as wide as you can as you never know were it will happen.

[markmullen]

This was 183 seconds at f6.3, ISO 100



It will depend on your ambient light as to how long you can expose for.

If you've got ND grads look at inverting them to hold back the foreground and keep the sky, the opposite of what you do for a daytime landscape.

[Jayfish]

Lovely shot and composition.

[AndWhyNot]

With such an intense storm last night I went for shorter exposures, reason being that multiple lightning strikes in a single long exposure could introduce a greater element of unpredictability in the exposure level.

My settings were mostly equiv to ISO400, f/8 & 15 sec but at times I used a shorter exposure with wider aperture. As Mark says a lot depends on what baseline exposure you need for your scene's ambient light levels.

[crmcatee]

That's exactly what I was shooting at - 15 Secs.. I had tried to extend it to 30 secs but the unpredictable nature of the sheet lightning would wipe out any captures of fork lightning by overexposing the sky so the fork got lost in the overall brightness of the sky.



This was f10, ISO 250 and 15 Seconds. My neighbours light and the lamppost just of shot on the right hands side didn't help


Lightning-1 by CRMCATEE, on Flickr

[Simpo Two]

Or just use B and take your finger off when you think it's had enough.

[Jimbo666]

This was mine from last night. 25sec, F/9, ISO 200.

DSC_0004.jpg by James Brookes, on Flickr

[JSS 911]

Only had a few flashes last night, but had everything set up so just reached over and flipped the remote without even leaving my pit. f7.1 25sec ISO-160

Lightning by sinky 911, on Flickr

[Jayfish]

Not mine but liked this from a friend, taken at Chatham Historic Dockyard.

[Turn7]

Jay, thats a great pic!

Seen some impressive phone pics from over Brands last night....

[Tuna]

Not sure if this will link, but this was a 30sec exposure through our back door about 8 years ago.

[Turn7]

love it!

[Fubles]

Lightning by MatthewsG, on Flickr

Iso 100 @f8 for 20 secs last night, beware moving trees...

didn't think it was tooo bad for a first attempt at lightning though

[MitchT]

Fabulous images! I've always wanted to get into lightning photography but in my corner of Yorkshire we simply don't have the kind of terrain that lends itself to really good electrical storms. I have attempted to capture the odd flash by putting my phone into video mode and capturing stills from it, but I'd like to do the job properly one day.

[RobDickinson]

You can get lightning triggers that will fire the camera when it strikes, they are $250 or so I think.

Otherwise , expose for the scene as said, 10-30 seconds and hope you get a strike, shoot continuous