Saturday, June 15, 2013

Photographing Lightening Storms


We had some storms blow through Ohio this week and I was able capture a small portion of their fierceness.  I stayed in the house for safety reasons but this limited what I was able to photograph with the camera mounted on a tripod and shooting through an open window.  This was my first attempt at photographing a storm, much less lightening.  I look forward to the next time when I'll do things a bit different and will post the results here. 

One thing I'll certainly do different is to shoot RAW which is my default anyway.  However, the only RAW shot I took of this storm is the very first photo at the top.  I had switched to JPEG thinking I'd be tripping the shutter continuously and needing as much buffer room as possible.  


Another thing I'll do different is to shoot at ISO100. Unfortunately, I had my camera set to Auto ISO up to 25,600 which makes for unwanted noise in the image and very sensitive to the bright flashes emitted by the lightening.  Then there's the f/ stop.  I'll probably set it to f/8 and leave it there and try different exposures including up to 30s.  Most of the exposures in these photos were around 1/6 and 1/8 with the exception of the photo at the top of this post being the longest at 5 seconds.  


So, while these shots aren't great I'm posting them so we can compare with the next time I get the chance to shoot a lightening storm.  In all, the time between the first shot and the last was only about 15 minutes or less before the storm was out of sight due to the limited view I had.  Hope you enjoy!











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