We both thought it lasted about a second, but I suspect it was shorter than that. I was not expecting it, I was just trying to get the cloud lit up by lightning. To take these shots, I estimate the time between lightning flashes, then set the exposure time so that I will hopefully only get one flash to avoid blurring (the lightning acts like a flashgun). I then set ISO so that at the desired shutter speed the clouds are only just visible in outline, as experimentation has shown this gives the best results. With the moon out, I could use ISO 200 on this one; on a dark night I am up to ISO 1600 or 3200.

I also got this one of lightning, the first time I have actually captured lightning bolts with any success. This one was taken with my Pentax-A smc 50mm f1.4 at f2.

The other night I was very lucky to get this shot from the aircraft over the Bay of Bengal. It is (I am nearly 100% certain; I am awaiting confirmation from Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who is a cloud expert) a Blue Jet, a very poorly understood phenomenon which is an electrical discharge in a thunderstorm that is emitted vertically upwards, and is straight. It lasted a bit longer than a normal lightning discharge, and travelled vertically upwards. They haven't been photographed very often, and I believe from researching them on the net that this is the first time one has been photographed in a cloud rather than erupting from the dome at the top of the cloud. In 30 years of flying I have never seen one of these before, so I feel exceptionally lucky to have got it on camera!

I had set the WB prior to this shot using moonlight on the clouds, so it is an accurate representation of what we saw. No PP apart from a bit of noise reduction and minor sharpening. Taken with my Pentax K5 and Sigma Super-Wide II, 6 secs handheld at f2.8, ISO 200.




If anyone is intested in reading more about this phenomenon, here's a link

Nice shots, the first one is my favourite, #10 is great as well. Well done on getting the gig to photograph their next gig!

I have one pic on Flickr that has been picked as a favourite 28 times, yet there's not a single comment on it...it's also not one of my better aerial shots, yet recently it has started picking up a favourite every other day. And it was posted over a year ago...

I have another(even older) pic with 18 comments but no favourites.

Lovely shots indeed, and the conversion suits them them very well. i especially like the last two.

Great shot, I agree with all the above comments.

If Carlsberg did holiday snaps.....

Great stuff, Mark, I especially like the second and third ones, but they are all excellent.

I read something about this, after having some trouble with Cokin filters when stacked. It seems that some ND filters block visible light but not infrared, so the balance between visible and IR light is thrown out of whack, leading to a magenta cast. You can set a custom WB to compensate for it, or you can correct it later if shooting RAW, which is what I do if I am stacking them. Stacking cheap ND grads doesn't work at all, as the cast ends up just on the top of the image. I have hardly used my Cokin filters for ages, must get some better ones....

There's an explanation of it here

I have been at work all day, so I have absolutely no idea what's been going on. I am very disappointed Tim has gone, though, and I would never have imagined him getting banned. To me he has always been one of the stalwarts on here. While I appreciate confidentiality etc, I would love to know what has been going on....