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09-02-2018, 08:13 PM   #1
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Photographing Cloud to Cloud Lightning

A few nights ago there was a lone cloud in the sky putting on quite a show, and I thought the contrast of it compared to the rest of the sky would be pretty cool! Unfortunately when I was doing long exposures on the cloud (30 seconds), even though I had multiple lightning events during the exposure nothing showed up in the picture.

Any tips?

09-03-2018, 01:59 AM   #2
Pentaxian




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These are nice to capture indeed. What ISO and aperture were you using? I tend to use 400 iso and the lens pretty much open, as the light, intense as it is, only lasts for a short period. Moreover, it is diffused by the clouds.
09-03-2018, 07:42 AM - 1 Like   #3
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Try 400 or 800 ISO. Lens wide open. A bolt of lightning lasts for a fraction of a second so long exposures don't increase the intensity of the lightning hitting the sensor. The reason for the long exposures is to have the shutter open for those fractions of a second. With that in mind, turn off the noise reduction. If you shoot 30 second exposures for 5 minutes with the NR on, you'll get 5 exposures. If NR is off, you'll get 10 thirty second exposures in the same 5 minutes, doubling the odds that the shutter will be open when a bolt strikes.













Oh, and remember to remove any lens filters. I went out to do some night work recently and swapped lenses in the dark. The fast lens was badly under-exposing so I changed to another lens. When it got light I could see the polarizing filter I had forgotten to remove from the fast lens.
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