A feeble attempt at a lightning pic...

[Justin]

We came back from the hospital late last night and were surrounded by storms on the way home. I passed the time by monkeying with the camera to see if I could catch a pic. Ended up with 503 pictures including the ones I took of the baby and family at the hospital and got 3 pics with an actual lightning bolt in it. This one is the best of the three.

[Diamond Bar]

Very nice... It is so hard to catch those.. The timing is so hard... Great pic it looks grey scale.. My best friend has an amazing one that she got from her back yard a few years ago that was pure luck...

[Michael]

Nice one, Justin!

[Legdog]

cool beans

[zcole04]

Very nice picture

[AggieHunter]

Sweet! I like how you cropped it to fade out to black on the left hand side. Were you just shooting when you saw a strike and trying to catch it, or setting a long exposure and hoping that one would strike during that time?

[coach_stew]

that's an awesome pic!

[Eric4x4]

Wicked cool!

[Justin]

Sweet! I like how you cropped it to fade out to black on the left hand side. Were you just shooting when you saw a strike and trying to catch it, or setting a long exposure and hoping that one would strike during that time?

I had no idea what to do to be honest with you. I ended up setting the camera to an ISO of 1600, so I could use the fastest shutter speed possible (1/50), with the aperature as wide open as I could get it (4.5), and the camera set to take pics continuously as long as I held the button. I switched to manual focus and would focus on the lights of vehicles way ahead on the road and then wouldn't touch it. I don't know if that was right, but I figured I would try it. I figure getting this one, with those settings, out of a moving vehicle, handheld was pretty lucky!

Oh, and I would just wait until I saw saw flashes and mashed the button hoping to catch it. I couldn't set the long exposure time since I was in the truck.

Thanks for comments. The learning continues.....

[DBHIII]

Cool shot! I gave it a try a few night ago. Tried several settings but never found one that worked. The focus was a huge challenge and never was able to figure it out. Thanks for the tips.

[Porterhouse]

good catch

[Justin]

Cool shot! I gave it a try a few night ago. Tried several settings but never found one that worked. The focus was a huge challenge and never was able to figure it out. Thanks for the tips.

I tried to catch a few of the first ones at the beginning with the lens on autofocus. The time it took to focus and take the pic was too long and even then it would focus on stuff in the foreground. I would just focus on the furthest object I could see and then leave it alone and see what happened. I know others on here have more experience at this. There have been a few cool lightning shots posted.