Arizona Monsoons - Questions About Taking Photos of Lightening!

Teri,

depending on the camera you have the easiest way I have captured lightening shots is with a photographic lightening trigger device, attached to your hot shoe Mount. Once lightening or fireworks pace the plane of the light sensitive sensor the camera will fire an exposure. I never had much luck trying to gauge the strikes until I bought this sensor for my Canon EOS 5D.

Hi Teri, sorry I didn't back to your question sooner. However, you have some good advice already posted here.

Considerations are essentially the same as shooting fireworks (see below).

http://activerain.com/blogsview/578496/Photographing-Fireworks-Happy-4th

Lock the camera down, set exposure to several seconds and you are off and running. :)

Good luck. -B

Darn~ how did I miss this post.  Thanks Bruce for the fireworks tips, now I'll be ready for next year!

Hi Teri, 

In the past (1984) I was able to get some lightening photos with the Bulb setting on my camera.  (35mm SLR)  I don't know what cameras have that type of setting.  That seemed to be the only way I could get a shot.

Lightning shots are more about patience than anything. You have a DSLR so you have a perfectly adequate tool to do it. You put that thing on a tripod, point it to where the lightning is going off and then set it to full manual and set the shutter speed for 15 seconds (or whatever time you find convenient). Aperture almost won't matter because you aren't really trying to get proper exposure for the full picture, only the lightning, and I would set the ISO as low as possible to avoid noise. Then you just keep continually shooting until you get some lightning pics. This only works at night when the sky is dark but you can usually get 1 good shot for every 10-12 pics you take but of course that depends on the severity of the storm.

This obviously requires a dry place to shoot from since the camera will be stationary on a tripod for quite a bit.

I've gotten a bunch of good shots this way:

WOW, Eric, those are some awesome pictures and I am going to have to try this next time we have a storm. I want pictures like that! Teri, thanks for asking the question and now we can't wait to see your photos!

Had a monsoon blow through tonight (just poured rain for about 15 minutes or so) and I got a couple more good ones tonight:

II have had some problems like the 1st one where it just comes out wayyyy too bright so I started closing the aperture down. The 1st one is at my camera's widest of f/3.2, the 2nd at f/5.0 - both are 15 secs

FWIW

Wow, those are some great photos Eric!  I'll have to check out my camera to do what you did, I think......... Terri, I'm like you, need more specific directions!!   Gorgeous photos. The monsoon here is so dramatic, I hope we have some more rain!

1 - Dark sky, nighttime. This method will probably overxpose daytime or twilight skies. You would have to experiment a little on shutter speed for those conditions

2 - Tripod

3 - Dry spot to shoot from

4 - Manual controls:

     Lowest ISO possible - 50 on mine

     Shutter speed - I use 15 sec which is my camera's max ; some cameras go 30 secs or longer, you may need to experiment on what sort of limits you have at various shutter speeds. At some point an open shutter will make the whole picture overexpose

     Aperture  - f/4.0 to f/5.0

5 - Shoot away - your camera will hold the shutter open for 15 secs and then take a few secs processing that photo (longer shutter times equal longer processing time for most cameras). Once it's done, just shoot the next one. You will take a bunch of pictures of nothing (and miss some good ones when the lightning strikes while the camera is processing the last picture) but eventually you'll get some good ones.

Like I said, it's more about patience than anything. I spent about a 20-30 minutes last night and came away with 8-10 decent shots.

Yep, he's my kind of guy!  Very detailed instuctions, but only on technical stuff ya know, not the really big stuff that we already instinctively know backwards and forwards.  Not the stuff like that of course. LOL!

I hear ya, I never thought I could put my website together but I did it.  I think my brain is only capable of one technical issue at a time. The camera is next, but I tell ya, I'm ready to hire a professional photographer for my photos, just can't find one!!  Good luck, keep working at it! 

Lightening photos are the best!  Why don't you post a couple of pics that you really like?

The painted desert this time of year should be beautiful.  We had all of that cloud cover today and the sun just peeking through, it was nice.  If it rains tomorrow, wow.  That's where purple mountains majesty comes from, the mountains are amazing. Please post some pics when you can.