Lightning Strikes...

[Joe_Lorenzini]

So you look out your window at 12:00am and see many, many flashes in the distance. The camera is all ready to go, mounted on the tripod (just in case) so you decide to take a short drive to an open space and see what you can get.

You get there around 12:10 and by 12:20 realize that you missed your chance and that most of the flashes are just that (and high up to boot). So you decide to go to another spot and give it one more chance.

You get there, park, turn off the car lights, set up and wait. Soon after the police depart (they had to stop and check) you decide that you're going to give it 3 more frames and then call it a night. By now it's 1:00am.

Out of 67 shots I got one. The very last one:


It's not groundbreaking or even that good but it'll make the trip out there worth it (not really, I'm seriously kidding myself).

Manual mode, 1 second exposure at f/2.8. 17mm using the lightning trigger.

Anyone else had this experience? (not with lightning, any shoot).

_/oe

[blonboy]

Joe~ this is a really sweet shot. Id be happy to own it thats for sure. Ive had many an experience like this one even withOUT the pay off. A shot like this certainly makes the effort worthwhile.......well done.

hey great to see you sat.

[KeithnFW]

Cool shot Joe!. . . where did you take this at???

[Jake]

Nice shot Joe! I would say it was worth it.

I have gone out in the middle of the night chasing lightning and come up with zero good ones.
And I shot a lot more then 67 frames just to get my zero.

[bethanne]

Wow! That is really good! I've yet to attempt lightning shots.

[TJPhotoGuy]

Wow! Neat!

[Wes]

Are you actually setting your camera up in the rain and exposing it to the elements, or are you under some sort of cover? Or, is it just not raining? I've always wondered these things.

BTW - awesome shot. I love the colors. What kind of post processing did you do?

[brad]

Sweet shot, Joe.. I'm impressed by your lightning photos.

[boxofrocks]

Very cool! I thought about doing that myself over the weekend, but didn't want to get the dirty looks from the wife (she has a slight case of nikkorphobia).

What kind of lightning trigger do you use?

[TXhummer2]

Kool!

[The Imagician]

Thanks for telling how you did it. I'll have to give it a try.

[KeithnFW]

and can someone tell me what a lightning trigger is??

[a2rob]

Nicely done!!

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Thanks all. I appreciate it. I have a vision of the perfect lightning shot in my head and anything but leaves me a little disappointed.

This was taken at the corner of 1171 and Shiloh in Flower Mound. I was standing across the street from the fire station looking toward the direction of Denton (north).

I have the weather channel's desktop application which shows me which way storms are moving in reference to me so I kinda know where the light show will be going on. I'll have my gear ready for anything over a 60% chance.

I set up the camera on tripod and stood next to it with a golf umbrella (all plastic). If it's pouring rain, I'll put a raincoat on the body and lens.

The lightning trigger can be found here:
http://www.lightningtrigger.com/

It's a dynamite tool (that has yet to pay for itself) that works very well.

As for post processing, I set my WB for daylight and do all the processing (except crop/resize) in Nikon Capture. I have a set of values specifically for lightning. It's pretty subjective though as you can modify the sky to almost any value.

Hope this helps!

_/oe

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Originally Posted by blonboy

Joe~ this is a really sweet shot. Id be happy to own it thats for sure. Ive had many an experience like this one even withOUT the pay off. A shot like this certainly makes the effort worthwhile.......well done.

hey great to see you sat.

Thanks, good to see you as well. Been a long time! Wish we had more time to catch up but I got called home rather abruptly.

_/oe