So how do you take pictures of lightning?

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So you want to take some lightning pictures? Here is a short step process on how to do it.

A high vantage point with a good look at the sky and foreground. High vantage point, like in a building on a balcony. Lets not find a high hill and stand there as the highest thing and play at being a lightning rod! Electricity has already been discovered, lets not reenact the process.

Find a view with a foreground that will also be evenly lighted and look good in the picture. Having a full picture with the lightning in the picture adds more character than just a dark blob, a horizon and some beautiful lightning. Taken a few of those before. Makes for a great picture of a flash of lightning but with no reference. It looks OK but doesn’t make for a very good picture.

Follow those composition rules and instincts.

Step one: Wait for it to rain.

Step two: Find someplace out of the rain to look at the lightning. Put your camera in something waterproof. I have used a nice little camera cover manufactured to be rain proof and even a plastic shopping bag and an elastic. Put the bag over the camera so you can still get at the controls, tear a hole for the lense, put the elastic around the lense to cover as much as possible with the bag and you are ready to go. Not high tech but it works. I put a lense shade on too. This does help in keeping rain off the lense.

Step three: Take some light readings, test images, and don’t worry about the lightning at this point. Make sure that your image is correctly exposed for the image itself without the lightning. Choose an exposure and ASA combination that will enable you to properly expose for the scene but also leave the shutter open for an extended length of time.  If you use an f-stop that is too small (dark) but still gives you the proper exposure for the scene you may end up with a nice scene but no lightning. The lightning could be underexposed. The image on this page was exposed at 15 seconds at f 8, 100 ASA to give a good exposure for the entire scene. When the lightning flashed it did up the exposure in some cases, just like your electronic flash does, but not to the extent of over exposing anything.

Step four: Start taking pictures. Use a cable release and good tripod to prevent camera shake. If you don’t have a cable release then use the self timer, set it for as low as it will go, usually two seconds, trigger the shutter and stand back and watch the pyrotechnics.

Step five: Get your wet self out of the rain and look at some great photos.

Tools:

A good tripod. This mean one that is solid, there may be wind which can cause camera shake on a flimsy tripod. I generally keep the center shaft down to keep it as solid as possible.

Cable release or other means of triggering the shutter without touching the camera. Keep the camera shake down to a minimum.

Camera water proof cover. Or plastic bag.  Good to have if the rain does come your way if you are not sheltered. I have the Kata Bags E-690 Elements Cover but have not had the need to use it yet.

Umbrella (aka lightning rod). Use this to keep the rain off the front of the lense if you have to point the camera up at the sky. You don’t necessarily need to use an umbrella itself as they can act like an lightning rod which doesn’t do the electronics of the camera much good no matter how entertaining for those around you. Find something to reflect the water that you can hold for a while. Piece of cardboard, girlfriends coat

You will find that some of the best pictures happen as you are resetting everything to take the next picture but those are the ones you keep in your head for yourself.

Happy lightning chasing!

Send me some links to your photos or send me your questions and I will see if I can answer them.