Lightning cracks down

22 November 2008 · 10 comments

This was taken from the shelter of my balcony last week during a fantastic storm.

It was the only really solid shot I got, a couple of others had faint cracks, and I got one good one at the very corner of a shot. Satisfying to get any at all though. Patience pays off!

I can see a bit of a halo around the trees, I’m not sure whether this is an actually photographic artefact from the lightning or just some dodgy processing. Do you know? Do you know how to fix it?

  • Aperture: f/9
  • Camera: NIKON D50
  • Focal length: 50 mm
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter speed: 8.6 s

{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Mat Packer November 23, 2008 at 09:18

My guess would be that the halo-ing is from processing, you’d have to tell us how you processed it, and compare it to the pre-processed image to know for sure.

Cracker of a shot though, so much detail in all the little cracks of lightning off the sides. If I shot this, pfft I wouldn’t care about the halos, it’s just such a one in a million shot anyway.

2 kristarella November 23, 2008 at 10:01

Cheers Mat! Yeah, I was happy to come away with this one!

Meh, hard to tell looking at the orig and the processed where it comes from. I didn’t do much at all, 0.05 contrast and 1.0 definition and bit of levels. Reducing definition might remove it a bit, not sure. It was distracting me was all. :P

3 Sire November 23, 2008 at 11:06

Top Shot Kristarella. Must have given of a helluva thunderclap?

4 kristarella November 23, 2008 at 11:14

Cheers Sire. Ooh yeah, the thunder was pretty huge. Rather exciting actually. Thankfully the wind wasn’t blowing my way so I didn’t get wet (more importantly my camera didn’t get wet, or maybe a couple of harmless drops).

5 Sire November 23, 2008 at 11:53

I’ve been dying to get some lightning shots but as of yet haven’t been caught in a storm. Too damn dry in SA at the moment.

6 kristarella November 23, 2008 at 11:58

Yeah, the weather has been all over the shop in NSW, but I hadn’t had an opportunity like that one for about a year. Thankfully since then I had read an article about how to get lightning shots.

7 Sire November 23, 2008 at 12:07

Was it an on-line article, if it was who do I have to spam to get the link? ;)

8 kristarella November 23, 2008 at 12:39

Haha, yeah it was. I thought it was at digital photography school, but I can’t find it there.

Well, the gist of it was,

  • You need a tripod
  • Mid-sized aperture— lightning is bright!
  • Put your shutter on something like 10, 20, 30 seconds, or on bulb and you can just hold it for a while and see if any lightning comes
  • Keep taking photos until it cracks across your view

That’s what I did. You can also check out what Mat did in the very same storm.

9 Sire November 23, 2008 at 12:44

Cool, likes like I’m going to have to get me a Digital SLR to apply some of those settings. Thanks mate.

10 pelf November 27, 2008 at 13:14

WOW! I have never successfully captured a lightning, but yours turned up very well! :D
Congrats!

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