Comments on: photographing lightning http://planetneil.com/tangents/2007/11/10/photographing-lightning/ various writings on photography, whether techniques, ideas, equipment info, or just rants. Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:31:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: joe http://planetneil.com/tangents/2007/11/10/photographing-lightning/#comment-317 joe Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:40:40 +0000 http://planetneil.com/tangents/2007/11/10/photographing-lightning/#comment-317 I'm a snapshot guy, but I knew the basics of shooting lightning outlined above. This past summer vacationing at Mono Lake, I was treated toward the view of lightning splitting a vast panorama at an infrequent cadence. A guy there was trying to capture it by shooting in rapid-fire mode (with a nice SLR and lens) in the general direction of the lightning. I had to laugh. At 1/100s shutter speed, firing at 5fps, he had only 5% chance of catching a lightning bolt. I guess he hadn't worked the math. (Or, perhaps he did, which is why he spent 20+ seconds firing his camera.) With no tripod and kids in tow, I only snapped few frames (nothing special--midday, overcast) to document the ensuing wildfire. The irony is that after I got home, I saw that I had captured a lightning strike! It was so small that it was aliased out on the small screen on the back of my camera so I didn't know at the time I had caught it. I’m a snapshot guy, but I knew the basics of shooting lightning outlined above. This past summer vacationing at Mono Lake, I was treated toward the view of lightning splitting a vast panorama at an infrequent cadence. A guy there was trying to capture it by shooting in rapid-fire mode (with a nice SLR and lens) in the general direction of the lightning. I had to laugh. At 1/100s shutter speed, firing at 5fps, he had only 5% chance of catching a lightning bolt. I guess he hadn’t worked the math. (Or, perhaps he did, which is why he spent 20+ seconds firing his camera.)

With no tripod and kids in tow, I only snapped few frames (nothing special–midday, overcast) to document the ensuing wildfire. The irony is that after I got home, I saw that I had captured a lightning strike! It was so small that it was aliased out on the small screen on the back of my camera so I didn’t know at the time I had caught it.

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