Lightning

As we had storms again around the city tonight, and as there has been some discussion recently on photographing storms, here are a couple of my attempts. All are taken with my *istD / FA J 18-35 @ 18mm / ISO400



2.7s @ f/6.7


13s @ f/6.7


2.9s @ f6.7

The camera was mounted on a tripod in a ziploc bag. There was a hole cut in the bag for the front element to stick out of and this was sealed with an elastic band. The hood was put on afterwards to try and keep the rain spots of the lens - thankfully although there was quite a lot of lightning there wasn't much rain. I also hand an umbrella to try and keep the rain of the lens. The last of the three photos I pressed the shutter when I saw the lightning flash and managed to catch it. I would guess that the flash duration was 1 - 2 seconds.

Lessons learnt:

1. 3 reasonable (IMHO) pictures - 70 deleted, so it is good to have lots of memory and the ability to edit the images with relative ease.
2. The sky is very big . The widest angle lens possible would be best for the conditions that we have here - storms all around and not just in one place. The Sigma 10-20 would seem to be a good choice.
3. Light pollution. It was difficult to find a position where I didn't have a street light or other light source in the frame - particularly as I didn't want to be right out in the open because when it rains here the last place you want to be is in an exposed position. Even with one of the newer bodies with all the seals, unless it can withstand total immersion then you don't want to be out when the rain starts - forget the umbrella at that point
4. Framing the shot. It was difficult to find a position where I had something fixed in the frame, that was appropriate, and capturing the lightning. It may have been easier in a more exposed place but see point 3 above.
5. Noise reduction. This was turned off in camera - something I learnt here a few weeks ago. I'm not really confident in photoshop to do anything other than basic noise reduction and haven't really attempted anything other than basic correction on the above shots. It would have been impossible to get some of the above shots had I had noise reduction on.

As usual comments / advise would be very much appreciated.

Steve

Very well done! No.2 has a strange circular bit that you luckily got.