I have recently been attempting to photograph thundrstorms at night,using the K5, with varying levels of success. Exposures seem to work best around 4-10 seconds, depending how active the storm is. If there's more than one major flash during the exposure, the pictures end up blurred as they are handheld. The first shot was taken at 6400 ISO , 3 seconds, using the Sigma 18-250 at 65mm. The second two were using the Sigma 24mm f2.8 Super-Wide II wide open, at 10 seconds and 3 seconds respectively. I just need to find a way of stabilising the camera a bit better! C+C, and any suggestions or ideas on how to improve my technique, most welcome.

Welcome to the forum Jeffrey and Tord!

I needed a new laptop anyway, I kept getting Crash Dump messages with a blue screen, and it was taking ages to start up. I've totally wiped it now and will give it to my son.

I have just got a 64 bit machine with 8gb of DDRAM and a dedicated graphics card which I picked up in Hong Kong.

I put a UV filter on all my my lenses, cheaper to replace a filter than a lens. It happened to me once with my 10-20. The CPL will block too much light, and you can get dark areas of sky if the light is at the wrong angle. These block less light. link

Thanks i-Berg, it took two and a half hours, but managed to download all the pics to my old laptop, which then crashed! Sorted now though, thankfully. I had better go buy a new card.....

Are not worth it...Took an 8gb card out of my camera last night and it disintegrated. I have just managed, after several hours of fiddling, to jam the bits in my old laptop's card reader and it says it's going to take 2 hours 18 minutes to download 398 pics, some of which are of thunderstorms at night I managed to capture last night, along with shots of Hong Kong and some of Doha. I just hope it works. I think I will stick to known brands from now on......

I read an article about this guy a few years ago, he used to wear a dirty old man's raincoat with the flash wire running up one sleeve and down the other, camera in one hand and flash in other, and walk around the city at night. I guess he's getting a bit old for that now. In nearly all his pictures the victim looks a bit startled. Don't think I would be comfortable with his technique, but he's got some good pictures from it.

Are you sure you haven't inadvertently changed the ev setting? If you press the +/- button just behind the shutter release on the left it will show the ev value. If it's not in the middle, press that button and twiddle the rear (or front, depending how it's set up on your camera) wheel until it's back in the middle.

Most used are the Sigma 24mm Super-wide II, the Sigma 10-20, and the Sigma 18-250, the versatility of which almost makes up for its short-comings. However I am hankering after some better glass.

Least used are the two WR kit lenses, the 50-200 hasn't been on my camera more than twice and I haven't used the 18-55 for at least 6 months. The Tamron 90mm doesn't get much use either as I don't do much macro.

I would love to find a lens that performs really well at f1.2. The smc A 50mm F1.4 I have is too soft wide open but it gets sharper stopped down a bit so f2 is almost usable. For thirty quid though I can't complain! The Sigma 24mm f2.8 Super-wide II on the other hand is very good at maximum aperture, which came in handy tonight shooting thunderstorms in the dark, where I had to use ISO 6400 with the lens wide open. A 24 or 28mm f1.2 I would find very useful for low light but a lens that performs well at that aperture would cost too much. Not even sure such a beast exists?