taking lightning at night-D90

J

jimred

Messages
17
Name
Jim
Edit My Images
Yes
I have been trying to take some shots of lighting but cant i have tried all sorts of setting but cant work out whats best.

the flash wants to come on all the time and the shutters slow , i want to fire off lots of frames as the lighting flashes.

Newbie

thanks
jim
 
The best way is to set the camera on Bulb and wait for the lightning. Close the shutter after you see the lightning.

If you try and fire as you see the lightning you will almost certainly miss it. Human reactions are nowhere near fast enough and even on a DSLR you get a small shutter lag. It may be small but its enough to miss lightning.
 
Sounds like your using the camera on Auto, which won't be able to cope with the conditions your shooting in. As said above, set it too bulb mode. Or if you don't have a remote shutter control, just put it in M mode and do a 5 second exposure at f/8 and keep trying until you capture one right. It's just a matter of experimenting.
 
No matter how fast the shutter speed is it'll never be as fast as the speed of lightning not to mention the time it takes for your brain to process the info telling your finger to press the shutter thus making it exedingly difficult to capture, it can be done but will take an awful lot of shots to finaly get one. Best way for night time is as mentioned by kingbling11 putting the shutter speed to bulb. If you are trying to get the shot early evening you could try using fast multishot you will have loads of pictures of nothing but also a selection of ones with the lightning.

Heres one i did earlier, while i was at work so the foreground was pretty pants to be honest
3766163175_a737e979d2.jpg

larger image
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3475/3766163175_a737e979d2_b.jpg
 
Here's my advice, set the camera to manual, aperture around f/8 - f/12, ISO 400, and BULB shutter mode. Put the camera on a tripod, and get a remote shutter release.

Rather than taking loads of photos in quick succession, you take fewer, much longer photos. In bulb mode, you press the shutter down, and it'll keep exposing till you take your finger off the button. That's why you need a remote release, to stop the camera shaking while you're holding the button down.

As for focussing, you can't do it automatically, but with high f-numbers you'll have a good depth of field anyway. Focus just short of infinity and you'll be fine, unless you've got stuff really close in the forground.

Then, point the lens at the sky, and start the exposure. Wait for a flash, then release the button. Job done!

This is what I got doing this last time there was a storm:





 
img95823resizeresizel.jpg


exif

Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 30D
Lens : EF 17-40 f/4L
Image Date: 2009:06:25 20:27:45
Focal Length: 17.0mm
Exposure Time: 8.000 s
Aperture: f/10.0


camera was on a tripod with shutter release cable on continous with shutter lock (keeps taking pics one after the next) - also had a 3 stop ND filter to prolong the shutter as it wasn't dark yet

was pre-focused on the tree line and switched to manual focus so it wouldn't change
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top