One of the questions that I get asked most often, is how I am able to capture photos of lightning. At first thought most people assume that you would need an extremely fast shutter speed and super fast reflexes to press the shutter. In actuality, you need the exact opposite.
But before we even get to that point, I want to make one point clear, taking photos of lightning carries a fair amount of risk (and if your not careful death). If you intend on trying to attempt this, understand that you are doing so at your own risk and that you should do your best to be in a protected area. You have been given fair warning.
Once you have a good safe place to set up you will need a couple of things, such as a tripod, cable release (one that you can lock the shutter open with), a few memory cards, and ideally a computer near by. My technique for capturing lightning is fairly simple, you use a fairly long shutter speed, point the camera in the direction you think will receive the most lightning strikes, take a bunch of photos, and hope that a few of them actually capture a strike. The longer shutter speed increases your odds of the strike occuring with the shutter open.
I usually shoot for a shutter speed of about 3 seconds. To obtain this you will probably have to be shooting in Manual mode on your camera. I set the shutter speed and adjust the aperture (set if higher if you are over exposed) and ISO (the lower ISO the better) to get an exposure that I’m happy with. This technique usually works better in the evening (thankfully this is when most storms hit my area), if it is still fairly light when you are trying this, you may need to use a neutral density filter to help get the right exposure. Keep in mind that a slower shutter speed is paramount in getting this to work. Once I’ve found exposure settings that will work, I point the camera at the part of the storm that I think is most likely to produce a strike (in case you haven’t guessed yet, you really need to be using a tripod). At this point set your camera to continuous shooting mode and lock the shutter open using the cable release. If you have everything set up correctly, your camera should be happily clicking away ever three seconds while pointed at a promising piece of sky. I usually stay pretty close to the camera and if I think the camera caught a strike, I turn the camera off, switch memory cards, then check the card using the computer to see if I did catch one. If I did, I copy the image to the computer, delete all photos on the card and get it ready to go back in the camera. I continue this process until the storm has passed.
Using this technique, I on average can capture at least four or five strikes during a storm, if the storm is pretty active. This technique has worked fairly well for me past. The longer the shutter speed the better your chances are at catching a strike.
Keep in mind though, that if you use too long of a shutter speed that the quality of your photos will be affected.
If you do happen to capture so strikes using this technique, let me know, I’d love to see the results! Just remember to find a safe place to try it!
My son and I went on a location scouting trip on Saturday this past weekend. I had heard of an area a couple of months ago that was populated with bald eagles, so we decided to check it out. Conowingo Dam is a hydroelectric dam that crosses the Susquehanna River about 5 miles south of the Pennsylvania/Maryland border. It was at least a two-hour drive from were I live, but well worth it in my opinion. It didn’t take us long to see our first eagle once we arrived, it was perched in the tree right above our car. In the two or three hours we were there we saw a total of 13 eagles, both adult and juvenile.
I may make a return visit this spring and definitely be back around Thanksgiving. In either case, I’ll be better equipped and hopefully come back with some decent photos to share. In the mean time, I’ve posted a few photos that I’ve taken on this initial trip.
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