From my just invented series, "How To Do Slightly Difficult Things"…
Capturing lightning was really difficult with 35mm film. I know because I spent many years trying to do it, only rarely successfully. That's because film had one major disadvantage compared to modern digital cams: a severely constrained number of shots. Relatively speaking. (I used to think going through 10 rolls of film was alot of pictures. How pathetically trivial! [contemptuous guffaw…])
Sure you can sit behind your camera throughout an entire storm, struggling valiantly to press the shutter at exactly the right moment (which works really well if you have advanced senses that can predict a lightning strike). But there is a better (and easier) way. Like most things, capturing a cool photo or two of lightning arcing through the sky in all it's fury pretty much boils down to one thing: taking alot of pictures! So if you can extrapolate from that simple imperative, you should now have all the knowledge you need. But I'll elaborate anyway. Here's the basic steps:
- You'll probably need an SLR-style or prosumer-level camera. With the right setup you can shoot continuously for over 8 hours. Equip it with:
- the largest memory card you can't afford
- extended/additional batteries
- a lockable external shutter bulb
- Set it on a good, sturdy tripod. (Unlike camera bodies, you just cannot spend too much on a good ball head and tripod! Nothing ruins good photo fun like a crappy tripod, and few things are as satisfying as a good ball head. Ahem. Anyway, I recommend the Kirk BH-1 Ball Head and Gitzo 3 series tripod.)
- Frame the shot. Wide angles have better chances of successful captures, and can capture dramatic cloud-to-cloud bursts that span a wide field of view. Tighter framing can potentially [but not necessarily] be more dramatic but with significantly lower odds of successful captures.
- Focus and lock it on manual.
- Set the ISO (gain), aperture, and exposure, using trial and error for a few shots. I usually start with the widest aperture and about 1/3 to 1 second on ISO 100 for wider angle shots. The lightning overwhelms the sensor at almost any useful setting anyway and the actual bolts of lightning will be completely blown out, but that's OK. You're almost guaranteed to capture it as long as the shutter is open for at least part of a lightning flash. What you want to expose for is the ambient and indirectly lit areas such as clouds, trees, ground, any buildings and lights, etc. Long exposures (significantly longer than 1 second) at dark locations can capture multiple strikes and slowly branching cloud-to-cloud bursts.
- Set the camera for continuous shooting mode.
- Protect the camera from rain. (But be willing to take risks to get the good wide shots&mspace;another reason why you don't want to spend a fortune on a camera body! The ability to take the risk with a cheap camera that you replace once a year due to damage can allow you to get far better shots than you would with a camera five times the price. Look for a rant on this subject [of smugly paying way too much for camera bodies assuming it makes your photos better], coming soon to this blog space.)
- Lock the shutter bulb.
- Go sit in your car and sleep, or go home.
- Go back and retrieve your camera and gear after a few hours or when the storm has passed.
- Download the photos, sift through the hundreds or thousands of shots, deleting the 99.9% that suck. (Oh by the way&mspace;the lifespan of SLR shutter assemblies are only rated to 100,000 to 200,000 shots…and you could use up about 5% of that lifespan in one lightning shoot. Yet another reason to not buy an expensive SLR body!)
- Congratulations! Odds are, out of all that you'll have about 5 or 10 shots that are pretty cool.
Yes I know it's pretty unglamorous. It's just throwing alot more spaghetti at the wall. But like most things in life, the key to great photography often has less to do with superior training and artistic eye, than being in the right place at the right time…and um, also prepared to take a picture. (Think about it&mspace;I bet the greatest photo you've ever taken was a complete lark.) This method just insures you (or your camera at least) will be in the right place at the right time, for at least some of the time.
BTW, this method (of letting the camera take pictures by itself unattended for hours) works great for many other subjects too, including wildlife photography.
Copied over from my original blog entry of the same name on Windows Live Spaces.
Copyright © 2006 James R. "Jim" Collier, all rights reserved.