I always had a fascination with the sky. Mesmerising clouds, colourful rainbows, the night sky and of course lightning!
The safest way to enjoy them is from behind a closed window inside your home or from inside your car (assuming that there are no metallic surfaces in your car’s interior). If you MUST go outside and capture them, these are a few pieces of advice:
- Use common sense. Don’t get caught exposed right under the storm. In my best photos, lightning was miles away.
- Where and when? Weather forecast websites are your friend! Also, Sat24.com will give you a live view of incoming storms and lightning.
- How to capture them? It is easier during the night. The process is similar to shooting star trails. You put the camera on a tripod and start taking continuous long exposures. Many Nikon cameras such as D600 have an internal timer. Canon cameras such as 6D need an external device such as an intervalometer.
- Camera settings: It depends on the time of the day, your foreground and the distance from the lightning. The above photo settings: 10-second exposures because in this storm, there was lightning every 10-15 seconds. Ideally, you only want to capture 1 lightning per shot as multiple ones in one exposure will probably ‘burn’ your image. ISO 100 and f/5 because lightning is really bright. You may be tempted to use a higher ISO and a wider aperture to better illuminate your foreground but this may overexpose your lightning, losing the fine details on its structure.
- Camera lenses. A wide lens is suitable when the storm is nearby. Longer focal lengths are better when the storm is far away.
- Lightning during the day is harder to capture as the bright conditions will not allow you long exposures. You could record them on a video and extract the lightning images using software in the post-process. Another way is trying to be fast enough and snap the photo at the millisecond it occurs using a camera remote control. Perhaps the best way is to use a lightning trigger, a device that will automatically take a picture the moment the lightning happens.
- Foreground: You may want to compose your image including an interesting foreground or just turn your camera up to only capture the sky.
- Multiple lightning shots in one image. You put the camera on a tripod and take many shots without moving it. You can then combine the shots in one image, stacking the photos with software such as Startrails or Photoshop.
This is a timelapse video showcasing most of my lightning photos and a few of my favourite ones below.
Most importantly, stay safe and have fun!
