My lightning photo + tutorial on their creation

Today I want to share the latest photos of lightning with a night storm and a small dilettante tutorial on their shooting. I hope you enjoy both.

Last night I stayed behind the processing of the photo. Gathered to sleep, I noticed that there was a light show on the street. Lightnings were, apparently, somewhere far away, because there was practically no thunder. But the sky on the horizon, behind the houses that can be seen in the photo, just shone.

I once observed something like this. For half an hour the whole sky was shining with lightning. But then I did not understand at all how this could be photographed. I shot it all on a video that turned out bad. I was very sorry. The spectacle was amazing.

And yesterday I grabbed my camera for a bit theoretically savvy. Although not technically equipped enough. The tripod was in the car. Therefore, I again had to use the balcony sill as a stand. With the risk of dropping the camera on the floor.

The epicenter of the storm passed by, all the most delicious was hidden from me by the nine-story building and the house opposite. But I managed to catch a few lightnings.

Now I share the results.

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Nikon D5000 + Sigma AF 17-50mm

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For those who are interested in how you can get such pictures, I share my knowledge.

You will need:

• DSLR camera (or similar with the ability to set long exposure and other settings)
• Tripod (highly desirable)
• A point from which it is possible to observe a thunderstorm safely (for example a glazed balcony with an opening window)

After installing the camera, you can apply the following settings:

• As usual for night shooting it is desirable to set a low ISO (applies to non-professional cameras, but the owners of professional equipment do not need my lessons)
• Set the aperture priority mode (so as not to suffer from the choice of exposure)
• Set the aperture giving a sharp shot on your lens (The best option for most lenses is f/8 - f/9, on my new lens a sharp picture is available already from the aperture f/4, this allowed to reduce the shutter speed)
• If you shoot in the dark, you'll probably need to turn on the manual focus (to set the focus to infinity, you can first point the camera at a sufficiently distant object and let it focus in auto mode, and then turn off autofocus)

After that, you must try to set the camera so that the composition in the frame was more interesting and the probability of lightning in the frame was maximum (in my case, only the second was available).

Then there are two options:

• Stand near the camera and take pictures of the landscape with a long exposure manually (many times in a row in the hope of catching lightning)
• Use the interval shooting (in turn, it is possible either using the built-in camera function or using a device called an intervalometer) with a small interval between sequentially shot frames (in fact, 1-2 seconds is enough)

The second option is preferable, because you can install the camera on a tripod and set it a task to take 100 pictures to go about your own business. On the other hand, it may be necessary to control whether the thunderstorm has left the frame.

It's also necessary to make sure that the camera does not pour rain from the open window. In my case, leaving it on the balcony and not controlling this factor was very dangerous. Rain with a lateral wind usually whips to the balcony, if not close the windows.

Thus, your task is to make the camera do a whole series of pictures with a long exposure. And due to long exposure time, a bright lightning, skipping in the frame, must be fixed in the picture, because It is much lighter than other surrounding objects.

I did not make 100 frames, because It was already 4 o'clock in the morning. And I was turning the camera in different directions trying to catch the lightning. But I collected all the pictures in one gif to visually show the process.

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Nikon D5000 + Sigma AF 17-50mm

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Do you like this post? You can see more of my works in my blog @boddhisattva