[mischivo]

O Hai,

I was recently in Cuba and took along my film camera and an assortment of lenses. There were very nice thunderstorms on two occasions. I had my Sekonic L-558 meter with me, but found that I couldn't (or more accurately, didn't know how to) use it at night, as the flashes were quick. I resorted to in-camera metering, and all it did was peak at 30s shutter speeds and maximum apertures. At one point, I attempted multiple exposures of 30 seconds each. It was guesswork at best. I failed each and every time. My shots were as abysmal as abysmal allows: completely clear Ektar negs and completely black Velvia slides.

When I returned, I bought a cable release for my lowly Elan 7E, and I'll use it and bulb exposures next time. I would've bought it before, but I made the false assumption that it was no longer sold. Next time, with my spot meter, I will depress the measurement button continuously and wait for a flash. I'm hoping this technique gives me an accurate reading for the one flash. I'm also hoping that the distant flashes I see (when I say flash, I'm not talking about a lightning bolt, but the lighting up of clouds) are actually within the minimum EV sensitivity of the meter, which is -2. This could very well be a problem, as our eyes are much more sensitive to light than our equipment.

Please share your techniques and offer your suggestions, as I've never really dabbled in night-time photography. Thank you,

[Ash]

You can't really meter for lightning strikes since they're not there when you're metering. Don't rely on the camera's metering either, because what you're metering for is the dark night's sky (and whatever ambient light's around), not the lightning strikes.

Nevertheless, it's also not guess work, more an estimation on what settings are required to effectively register the strikes without having to adjust exposure much in PP.

Really depends on where you are (city, regional town, real country town) and what ambient light/light pollution is around. But generally something like f/5.6-8 is worth trying at ISO 200-400 focused manually at infinity to see if the strikes show up, then adjust accordingly.

Shutter speed bears little importance in a dark sky, although in light polluted scenes or with street lights around, this will be important to keep an eye on for a maximal shutter speed before it starts to affect the exposure.

Hope this helps.

[mischivo]

Crud, I guess Velvia is far too slow at ISO 50 to capture individual bursts, and Ektar at 100 wasn't that great either.

My reason for longer shutter speeds was because I assumed one flash would not be enough to expose the films appropriately, so I was hoping the combined bursts would expose the film in a cumulative manner, albeit in a fashion that was not true to the individual bursts. I was on a secluded island where the only ambient light was coming from the resort to my back, and it wasn't anything that I would describe as light pollution. It was basically pitch black minus the bursts.

[Ash]

Definitely not sensitive enough even if you opened up your lenses wide.
But do try again with higher ISO rated film if you get the chance.

[emalvick]

I'm not an expert at all, but a problem I had once was that having too long of an exposure often washed the lightning out because it the case I was shooting, the lightning was really lighting up the surrounding sky (clouds / haze) creating its own light polution that after a few strikes ended up making the shot worthless. I'm guessing I was at a similar position you are at, and living in a place without much lightning, I've never tried again (although I'd love to)

[Digitalis]

photographing lightning is fun and rather hazardous I have been in situations where it has been close...really close.. *in imminent danger of getting my eyebrows fried off*...: In those situations I would say ISO100 f/22 @ 4s should do the trick, and a good life insurance policy wouldn't go amiss either...

with a shutter speed of 30s and assuming a moderately active electrical storm at distances of:
1-5 KM your aperture should be at f/16 -f/11
5-10km your aperture should be at f/11-f/5.6

and use the widest angle lens you've got (within reason)

As you are probably aware light gets weaker as it gets further away, as powerful as lightning is it follows the same pattern of attenuation. one thing to mention is reciprocity failiure, which is a total PITA. in a nutshell; it means film loses sensitivity as exposures become longer and longer, velvia 50...for this matter any saturated film really can't handle exposures much longer than 4 seconds too well. to get proper exposure for a 1 minute exposure on velvia 50 ( I'm working with the older ISO 50 emulsion here, I don't know what the figures are for the new stuff are) you would have to expose for a good four minutes to get decent results, Ektachrome isn't great with long exposures either..Fuji Provia or Astia are both excellent films that are VERY stable for long exposure work. Colour balance of these films being very neutral with Astia being somewhat less saturated of the two.


to catch the illumination of clouds from the lightning is very difficult because the lighting of cities often drowns out this very cool effect, so it's best to use a very fast lens(faster than f/2) when you are far from the ravages of civilisation.