Lightning photos and some questions

So I took the night off and while the kids are away at church camp, means my wife go storm chasing. I got the idea to try and get some shots at a wind farm not far from where I live. Now I know I had some adjustments I could have made to make them better but what I really want to know is why after capturing a 50-120 second shot it seemed to take forever before I could take another. Probably upwards of a minute.

Is it normal to not be able to take another shot while the previous is processing? Any and all advice on taking better shots like these would be greatly appreciated.


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These are actually quite good. Lightning photos are always a crap shoot. One way to improve your chances is to set the shutter on B, lock the shutter open and cover the lens with a matte black card. You can uncover the lens, allow a lightning strike to record and then cover it again. I have also use this technique with a lot of success with fireworks shots.

Wow!
Those are some awesome shots right there.

You can surely take as many shots as your camera allows... it's called burst mode
Depending on your camera (buffer), the SD card transfer speed & the file format in which you save, the numberof shots possible will vary.

And i do see lens flare (or is it water drops) on one of the pics..

Interesting hobby btw!

Maybe you need a faster card?

My card is 45mb/s but I see there is one out with 95 so I might have to invest in that. I also have found that having noise reduction on will cause double the time it takes along with the fact that I should limit my shots to closer to 30sec. Always learning. Thanks for the tips guys.

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Litrekid said:

My card is 45mb/s but I see there is one out with 95 so I might have to invest in that. I also have found that having noise reduction on will cause double the time it takes along with the fact that I should limit my shots to closer to 30sec. Always learning. Thanks for the tips guys.

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Click to expand...

There is a setting in the menu's for Long Exposure Noise Reduction... I believe you will find that it is set to ON.. That lengthens the processing as the camera takes a dark snap (shutter closed) and uses that to process out noise before saving...

If you want to shoot faster on long exposure, turn it OFF.. Not sure how bad the noise will be but I suspect you wont like it but give it a try.

Pat in NH

RockyNH said:

There is a setting in the menu's for Long Exposure Noise Reduction... I believe you will find that it is set to ON.. That lengthens the processing as the camera takes a dark snap (shutter closed) and uses that to process out noise before saving...

Click to expand...

This would be my guess as well.

Simply put, Long Exposure Noise Reduction doubles the processing time of every shot. Say, for example, you took a 60s exposure. After the shutter closes the camera takes a second 60s exposure with the shutter closed. This second shot is perfectly black and noise free since the shutter is not open. This perfectly clean second frame is "combined" with the first, and in so doing the noise in the first frame is removed, but at the cost of the shot requiring two-minutes to process. A thirty-second exposure would double to one minute total processing time, etc. It's a little annoying, I agree, but it's also very effective.


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Vote #3 for Long Exposure NR. If you use Photoshop there are techniques you can use to eliminate that noise without having to suffer the shutter delay. A quick web search would find it (IIRC it's just a long exposure with the cap on and then using that in a layer to subtract the noise produced by your particular sensor).

BackdoorHippie said:

Vote #3 for Long Exposure NR. If you use Photoshop there are techniques you can use to eliminate that noise without having to suffer the shutter delay. A quick web search would find it (IIRC it's just a long exposure with the cap on and then using that in a layer to subtract the noise produced by your particular sensor).

Click to expand...

Good Info Jake... I have no PS skills and an old CS2, but this is good to know that it has this capability..

Thanks

Pat in NH

Great captures, Thanks.