What a corker! A top-notch electrical storm passed through Jeziorki this evening, time to hone my lightning-catching photo techniques... I took many but only two were any good. Rather than fix an exposure time for an arbitrary 30 seconds, I set the exposure for 'bulb', aperture for f6.3 and waited for a strike. Some waits were longer than others. Without a screw-in fixture in the shutter button for a release cable, some pics came out blurred.Both good pics were taken from my bedroom window and show lightning strikes over the Las Kabacki forest across ul. Sarabandy. The storm, having calmed down, is coming back, time to upload these pics to the blog, switch off and disconnect computer from mains, and rush upstairs to get some more shots!
...And back again, the storm having passed off to the north east of Warsaw. In the meanwhile, I managed to catch this one (left) as the storm made its second pass over Jeziorki. Note the colour of the lightning has changed from violet to red.
Great shots
ReplyDeleteBob
Seems that everyone had a good view of the lightning apart from me! I knew there was a lot of it about because our sky was flashing like crazy but no forks in view from our little part of Zoliborz.
ReplyDeletethese are amazing - how do you do it?!
ReplyDeleteAnd can I capture lightening on my ordinary little digital camera? or on my Dad's old 35mm SLR?
Well, Pinalona, to capture lightning you need:
ReplyDeletea) digital camera wih manual settings of aperture and shutter speed - the latter has to have a 'B' (or bulb) setting. This means the shutter is open as long as you have your finger on the shutter button.
b) A stout tripod that can be locked down tight and keep the camera totally still for minutes on end. With your finger on the button (unless shutter button has internal thread for a cable release, which you also possess).
c) Luck and a good storm. I've NEVER experienced storms of this intensity in 39 years living in the UK. The three successful pics represent a tiny fraction of what I snapped on Sunday - most didn't come out.
Yes, you can take pics of lightning on old-school film SLRs - but you'll burn through rolls and rolls of film with no guarantee of success. With digital, you can get it right on the night through trial and error.
Hope that helps!