HELP PLEASEEE Lightning Shots

Nokkie

Senior Member
Hi Everyone
I would really love some help as to what would be the best settings to shoot lightning i have a D5000 & 18 - 105 WA & a 55-200 .I am using a tripod to.
Thanks soooo much.:):)
 

naja

Senior Member
TO be honest watch where it is striking, set the camera up on a tripod and leave the shutter open for 30 secs or so (at night this is)

It works for me
 

AxeMan - Rick S.

Senior Member
Please excuse this long post but I feel some other things need to be pointed here that have not been touched on yet. Some of this information has been copy cut and pasted from other Web Sites.

This is my passion Lightning Photography, and I'm still learning as I go along and my pictures still have room for improvements. This coming season will be my sixth year doing it, and my second year with my Nikon, so I'm not an expert on this and I'm curious if any other members "play" with lightning and what kind of feed back comes in on this thread.

I'm going to tell you and anyone else thinking about doing this, DON'T DO IT. You are taking a risk when you go out after these photographs and you want to weigh those risks yourself against the sheer spectacle of being close to these storms to photograph them.

Lightning is nothing to play with. A leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass. "Bolt from the Blue" lightning flashes have been documented to travel more than 25 miles away from the thunderstorm cloud.

You don't want to be the person who took the most fantastic lightning picture and have the credit given to a dead person who will never take another photo again. About 2,000 people are killed worldwide by lightning each year. Hundreds more survive strikes but suffer from a variety of lasting symptoms, including memory loss, dizziness, weakness, numbness, and other life-altering ailments.

Your still here? I haven't talked you out of this yet? You have update your will, and made sure your life insurance is paid up and become an organ donor just in case there are some unburned bits left if you get hit right?


With that all said:

Location / Safety:
You want to be someplace dark away from city lights, you'll be able to keep your lens open longer this way. I prefer to be undercover, some large solid structure over my head, (umbrellas are not considered cover!) Along with something over my head I like to be off the ground, in a car, on a porch, or your safest bet inside a building. You also don't want to be the tallest thing around, lightning is more likely to strike the tallest object around, you don't want to be that object. Try to avoid shooting through glass it might reflect the flash of the lightning.

Camera in manual mode:

f/stop:
This is your most important setting and the hardest one to always get right because no two bolts of lightning are the same, it the luck of the draw, but you will find a "working range" you like. I find myself shooting between f/4 and f/8 depending on how far away the storm is. But I don't limit myself just to those settings. One of my better pictures I took at f/22.

Shutter speed:
Set on bulb, your going to need the remote to control how long the lens is open. Holding the shutter button by hand for any amount of time you will get camera shake even on the tripod. I don't keep the lens open for no more than 30 seconds. I find the longer my lens is open that my photo's turn red using these f/stops. I open the lens and count to 30 (which is really about 20 sec) if there is a flash of lightning I close my lens, you might want to keep it a second longer in case there is a multiple strike, if there is no flash after my count to 30 I close the lens and start over. You can see how fast the picture count can go up your going to shoot a lot of blanks unless you use a lightning trigger as pointed out in one of the above posts.

Auto focus:
Don't use it. Because you are shooting in the dark the camera has a hard time finding something to focus on and until it can find a focal point it will lock you out of any photo you try to take. I also find most lens will focus beyond infinity by hand, I also wear glasses and even with the view finder adjustment I have a had time getting my camera in focus by hand and have to use the auto focus to set the lens.

Here is what I do. During the day take your camera out and on auto focus get it to focus on a infinity subject, then in your camera settings go into focus mode and set it in manual. Do not use the switch on your lens. By locking the focus in the camera settings the lens is locked, where as if you use your lens switch the lens can be moved accidentally. I found this out the hard way and shot a entire storm out of focus because I bumped the focus ring on my lens. Lock that lens down.


ISO and Noise Reduction:
Because I am limited with the D3000 I like to shoot at 100 ISO and keep the Noise reduction filter / Active D-Lighting off.

I use a D3000 prior to me buying it I was not aware that compared to other models it is poor at higher ISO's above 400 and the Noise reduction filter / Active D-Lighting slows the write time to the memory card down, the longer exposure you take the longer the write time is to the card. Write times of over a minute are not uncommon for a 30 sec exposure, and because of this your are going to miss shots. I don't know if this holds true to the D5000 you will have to check. This is one reason I'm getting out of the D3000 for a D90. However I hope to experiment with a D90 this year with higher ISO's, N/R filter, and a 35mm F1.8 lens. I'll have to take a backseat on ISO / Filter setting and let the experts comment on that.

This was my starting point years ago. I checked the link and it's still good.
Photography techniques: How to photograph lightning


BE SAFE
Rick

DSC_4465.jpg
f/9
20.4 sec
ISO 200
f/stop to high
Exposure to long
"The Red Cast of Death"

DSC_4129.jpg
f/25
1.8 sec
ISO 200

DSC_7739.jpg
f/8
15.4 sec
ISO 100

DSC_7765.jpg
f/8
6.9 sec
ISO 100
 

Joseph Bautsch

New member
Great post, and very good shots Rick. And you are absolutely correct this can be a very dangerous activity. Unfortunately storm hunting has become a national "sport" just for the thrill of it. Now a days you can actually take tours that go out and hunt weather related events such as tornados and lightning thunderstorms. I think most people have more common sense than to try and become part of a gene pool cleansing project. Photographing lightning can be done safely if you apply common sense and follow a few rules of personal safety. Shooting lightning thats off on the horizon is one thing and shooting it right over your head is something else entirely. You may not get as many pictures as you would like but you will be alive to talk about it.
 

Kim20

Senior Member
Please excuse this long post but I feel some other things need to be pointed here that have not been touched on yet. Some of this information has been copy cut and pasted from other Web Sites.

This is my passion Lightning Photography, and I'm still learning as I go along and my pictures still have room for improvements. This coming season will be my sixth year doing it, and my second year with my Nikon, so I'm not an expert on this and I'm curious if any other members "play" with lightning and what kind of feed back comes in on this thread.

I'm going to tell you and anyone else thinking about doing this, DON'T DO IT. You are taking a risk when you go out after these photographs and you want to weigh those risks yourself against the sheer spectacle of being close to these storms to photograph them.

Lightning is nothing to play with. A leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass. "Bolt from the Blue" lightning flashes have been documented to travel more than 25 miles away from the thunderstorm cloud.

You don't want to be the person who took the most fantastic lightning picture and have the credit given to a dead person who will never take another photo again. About 2,000 people are killed worldwide by lightning each year. Hundreds more survive strikes but suffer from a variety of lasting symptoms, including memory loss, dizziness, weakness, numbness, and other life-altering ailments.

Your still here? I haven't talked you out of this yet? You have update your will, and made sure your life insurance is paid up and become an organ donor just in case there are some unburned bits left if you get hit right?


With that all said:

Location / Safety:
You want to be someplace dark away from city lights, you'll be able to keep your lens open longer this way. I prefer to be undercover, some large solid structure over my head, (umbrellas are not considered cover!) Along with something over my head I like to be off the ground, in a car, on a porch, or your safest bet inside a building. You also don't want to be the tallest thing around, lightning is more likely to strike the tallest object around, you don't want to be that object. Try to avoid shooting through glass it might reflect the flash of the lightning.

Camera in manual mode:

f/stop:
This is your most important setting and the hardest one to always get right because no two bolts of lightning are the same, it the luck of the draw, but you will find a "working range" you like. I find myself shooting between f/4 and f/8 depending on how far away the storm is. But I don't limit myself just to those settings. One of my better pictures I took at f/22.

Shutter speed:
Set on bulb, your going to need the remote to control how long the lens is open. Holding the shutter button by hand for any amount of time you will get camera shake even on the tripod. I don't keep the lens open for no more than 30 seconds. I find the longer my lens is open that my photo's turn red using these f/stops. I open the lens and count to 30 (which is really about 20 sec) if there is a flash of lightning I close my lens, you might want to keep it a second longer in case there is a multiple strike, if there is no flash after my count to 30 I close the lens and start over. You can see how fast the picture count can go up your going to shoot a lot of blanks unless you use a lightning trigger as pointed out in one of the above posts.

Auto focus:
Don't use it. Because you are shooting in the dark the camera has a hard time finding something to focus on and until it can find a focal point it will lock you out of any photo you try to take. I also find most lens will focus beyond infinity by hand, I also wear glasses and even with the view finder adjustment I have a had time getting my camera in focus by hand and have to use the auto focus to set the lens.

Here is what I do. During the day take your camera out and on auto focus get it to focus on a infinity subject, then in your camera settings go into focus mode and set it in manual. Do not use the switch on your lens. By locking the focus in the camera settings the lens is locked, where as if you use your lens switch the lens can be moved accidentally. I found this out the hard way and shot a entire storm out of focus because I bumped the focus ring on my lens. Lock that lens down.


ISO and Noise Reduction:
Because I am limited with the D3000 I like to shoot at 100 ISO and keep the Noise reduction filter / Active D-Lighting off.

I use a D3000 prior to me buying it I was not aware that compared to other models it is poor at higher ISO's above 400 and the Noise reduction filter / Active D-Lighting slows the write time to the memory card down, the longer exposure you take the longer the write time is to the card. Write times of over a minute are not uncommon for a 30 sec exposure, and because of this your are going to miss shots. I don't know if this holds true to the D5000 you will have to check. This is one reason I'm getting out of the D3000 for a D90. However I hope to experiment with a D90 this year with higher ISO's, N/R filter, and a 35mm F1.8 lens. I'll have to take a backseat on ISO / Filter setting and let the experts comment on that.

This was my starting point years ago. I checked the link and it's still good.
Photography techniques: How to photograph lightning


BE SAFE
Rick

View attachment 1003
f/9
20.4 sec
ISO 200
f/stop to high
Exposure to long
"The Red Cast of Death"

View attachment 1004
f/25
1.8 sec
ISO 200

View attachment 1005
f/8
15.4 sec
ISO 100

View attachment 1006
f/8
6.9 sec
ISO 100
What a very interesting an informative post! Much appreciated, and I will consider everything you said about the danger involved.
 

jumbo

Senior Member
Tried to shoot lightning for the first time, and this is all I could get.
Now that I have read the post by AxeMan, I will try to shoot better next time.

for this shot:
Aperture 2.8
Exposure 2 seconds
24 mm AI-S lens on D200 camera
​ISO 400
 

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