Silver lining in the cloud - taking lightning photos
The weather in Delhi has been super freakish lately (for this time of the year). Daily thunderstorms have become a norm and it’s getting to be quite a nuisance. However, for every dark cloud, there exists a silver lining. Last night when the rain gods were having a party, I decided to take out my camera and capture the silver lining. Here follow some of the pictures that came about from that effort.
This one is the best of the lot by far; my camera was pointed exactly at the right place at the right time.
I have no previous experience photographing lightning (actually not much experience in photography at all). The way I took these was to mount the camera on my tripod, and then set the exposure for 10 seconds, with an ISO of 250. Then I pointed to an area in the sky and simply started clicking (not waiting for the lightning). Now during the 10 second exposure, if a lightning happened to take place in the field of view of my camera, it would be captured. This particular shot is the only one I got (in over 300 shots where the lightning occurred bang in the middle of where my camera was looking).
The rest of the pictures have been cropped from much larger pictures (due to lightning happening on the sides of the field of view). Here goes:
The above is actually two different lightning taking place. Since it was a 10 second exposure, both were caught on the same photo. The one below has the same story.
And here are some more:
I think those are enough. I won’t put too many more in anymore. If anyone has simple to use tips that can help me improve my lightning photography capability, then please let me know in comments.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 am
These are very good. Some more detail in the foreground, may add to the overall appeal though it may make it less dramatic. You can try using a larger aperture if you are not already. I would also suggest playing with the exposure time - try a longer exposure time to get more foreground detail. I have tried exposure times of upto half an hour for low light landscapes (though not with lightning) - you can get some beautiful pictures.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 am
wow beautiful pictures, 1st and 4th is awesome, thnks for sharing
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
@Vishal, thanks for the tips… I would never have thought of that long an exposure ever, but now that you mention it, it makes sense… of course, i wouldn’t do it with lightning because a very long one would make everything white (i had a perfect shot of lightning but the exposure was 30 seconds, and so there was a lot of white due to other strikes during that period)…
Aperture: alas, i was limited by my lens. The best my lens can do is 4.0 (I wanted to buy one which was 2.0, but it was too expensive)… (the lens I was using was: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM). My camera setup: http://blog.gadodia.net/i-bought-a-new-camera/
thanks for the advice… (and I guess, I can pat my own back for getting these pictures on the first try)
@Rohit, thanks for the complements…
May 28th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
[...] while ago I posted photographs I had taken during a thunderstorm. Those came out nice according to my standards. This caused me to go back over other photos that I [...]