Lightning Fever!

Over the last couple of weeks some strong storms have moved through and past my area.  Because I have been participating in a Facebook group that has brought over 150 Vermont photographers together I have found myself a little more daring and resolved to better my photography and try new things.  Namely, trying to get a good shot of lightning on purpose.

Here is a pic that I took back in 2010 after a storm that I got caught a mile away from home walking in:

That was the only one I had taken that came out good in the past 3 years.  It was handheld and totally accidental. 

Now I have learned the importance of a tripod for such things.  I usually hate using a tripod because it really restricts me and limits me to that one spot.  However, I used one a week ago and got this photo:

This storm was particularly violent so the odds of me getting a shot of lightning were in my favor.  I waited until the storm was flashing in my back yard and then opened my back screen door, set up my tripod, and started pressing the shutter button.  I pushed that button 350+ times to get this one!  Again though, it was more of a lucky shot than anything else.  

This past Saturday I happened to look out the window and saw this:

I got all excited because I hadn't seen any of these this year yet, and because I knew I would get another chance to try to get a lightning shot, this time at night so I could do it the "right" way.  When it got dark enough, around 9:30pm, I got my camera, tripod, and wireless remote and ran across the road to the Dollar General parking lot.  I wore sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt and socks because it was so buggy I knew that I would get eaten alive.  The cloud was fairly active so I played around to see what settings would work.  

Using BULB mode, I decided that an aperture of about 8.1 was sufficient, and an ISO of 200.  I held the shutter open up to 40 seconds, depending if I caught a flash of lightning or not.  I also strongly recommend using RAW format if you can.  It takes much less time to recover from long shutter speeds.

Here are the best results:

 

This one was 40 seconds exposed.  

I wish I could have stayed out there longer but it was just too buggy and my husband was waiting for me so we could watch Cheers, which he had never seen before until last week :)

Looking forward to the next storm so I can try again!

Betsy Finstad