Lightning storm, Kelso, Scottish Borders, UK

Skillful work, Stunning result

Wow, one of the best lightning images I've seen!

Regards
David

Very well captured!
I've tried these myself so I know they are not easy

Perfectly timed. How did you manage it? I've tried and failed miserably!

Superb shot! Glad to see your images here.

Hi folks

Thank you for very kind and positive feedback on this image.

"Perfectly timed. How did you manage it? I've tried and failed miserably!"

Yes, indeed usually a lot of luck with lightning shots but odds were in my favour due being a slow moving storm coming directly towards me therefore virtually no drift east or west ... a sitting duck for my camera lens!

Having more experience with astronomical imaging this was a small step sideways... here is my method for lightning...

1. Firstly determine a suitable exposure/aperture for your local site, this can be done on any cloudy evening even without a storm, when shooting lightning most people get over excited or nervous and forget the exposure/aperture setting for the foreground interest, get this correct and the lightning exposure will look after itself.

2. As when shooting astronomical images the stars trail due to Earth's rotation, the same can be said for clouds/direction/speed as this determines the limiting exposure time too, more impact with less blurry clouds due to drifting. (You can see my image retains a lot of cloud detail on underside of storm cloud)
Exposure around 30secs is a good length to start and standard maximum exposure setting on most cameras so should you forget your timer release it's a good standard to get used to ...but reduce or increase time if so desired according to speed of cloud movement.

3. Keep your ISO's low... you may want to print your images up to larger size later ...but not too low as you do want to capture the action, I tend to keep around ISO200.

4. Set your aperture, starting around f8 is a good start, the instinct is to open the aperture wide in low light but due to the brightness of some lightning this will cause burnout of detail in the lightning forks, you may in fact find yourself closing down an extra stop or two!

5. Luck ...lots of it ....and a very active storm thrown in for good measure!

There are more lightning storms forecast in the coming days and often July & August are good months too so wish you all stormy skies but please be very careful.

Mike

Brilliant! I'll definitely give that a go.

Mike - thanks for sharing the excellent image and an even bigger thank you for your tips.

I was standing in my front garden for nearly 40 minutes at 1am trying to do the same - and got it so badly wrong - nothing I tried worked and given that it was the longest - slowest moving (left to right in my case) lightening display I have ever seen - this became very frustrating.

I now realise why - I will not embarrass myself by giving details - let's just say I screwed up big time

Thanks!

Carl

Well seen and caught. THX for techn. details

Thanks chaps ...

Carl sound like you broke point No.1

My tip here would be to check your settings before venturing outside ...try 15secs to 30 secs time range depending on cloud movement, start around f8 as your centre aperture setting allowing some up or down tweaking, ISO at 200 is usually fine in most cases for subject.

Good luck next storm!

Mike

That's most impressive! Guess there were not too many other people around at that time of the night to wonder what the hell you were doing! Even lugging a camera and tripod around people (humans!) still don't understand what you're about!

Wow! A fantastic image