Lightning! (got away with it this time )

[Buddy Thomason]

Frankly, I was a little uncomfortable shooting in these conditions. But the results were spectacular. These monster strikes were very close and super loud but at no point was the air around me charged. The rain and wind were biblical.

[Kevin Jones]

All outstanding images, however I think the second is my favorite by a pinch.

I'm really enjoying these non-knife photos.

[Jon Brand]

WOW! I've tried to do that and never had good results. Very impressive. Did you use one of those lightning sensors?

[Jerry Manuel]

Buddy - Those are some kind of count

[Buddy Thomason]

Thanks, guys.
To capture these strikes I set my camera's shutter to 'bulb' which means you push the button to open the shutter and it stays open until you press it again. That way I could just open the shutter and start counting. If I counted to 30 with no strikes I closed the shutter and tried again, knowing that keeping the shutter open for too long would result in overexposure. Sometimes I got multiple strikes while the shutter was open, but if there were more than three the image was overexposed and muddled. In the 30 minutes it took this storm to move out I made probably 50 exposures and wound up keeping 8 or so. The number of strikes was much higher than I've experienced before, which made for great images.

[Brian Thie]

Fantastic images Buddy!

I tried doing this years ago with a 35 mm film camera. I pretty much just wasted a roll of film on every attempt .

What was your arpeture setting on the camera? I am guessing that any automatic settings would not be able to adjust quickly enough to get such sharp images.

Thanks for sharing
Brian

[Joe Paranee]

that is awesome Buddy

[Peter Elovich]

Those are COOL Buddy. Severe storms are on the way to this area as I write this!

Seems like "mother nature" is angry these days!

Peter

[Buddy Thomason]

Originally Posted by Brian Thie

What was your arpeture setting on the camera? I am guessing that any automatic settings would not be able to adjust quickly enough to get such sharp images.

I'm a manual shooter in most situations for the reason you suggest. In this case, the aperture won't matter much as long as it's in the lens' mid-range, say f8-f13 or so - where most lenses are the sharpest. At such distances depth of field as determined by aperture isn't limited so it's not necessary to go all the way to f22 just to get a good sharp capture. You could even use f2.8 but then you couldn't keep the shutter open as long as you could for a smaller aperture.

At the rate these strikes were coming I could use a real sharp mid-range aperture and keep the shutter open for the thirty count I mentioned. Thus I was able to catch multiple strikes on occasion. At f2.8 to f6, after about 10 sec. the capture would be way overexposed. Above f13 the shutter can be open longer than my 30 count but you run into other problems - especially digital noise which increases the longer the shutter is open. Camera shake and blurring are increasingly likely when the shutter is open for a long time too, even with a tripod and especially in a dynamic outdoor weather situation.

[Eli Gautreaux]

Beautiful pics Buddy, thanks for posting them!