Utterly Meaningless

Beautiful. It IS a wonderful world.

Very, very cool

Tripod? What sort of settings? My attempts at catching lightening on film have all failed miserably.

Handheld. F2.8 @ 1/4 sec. ISO 100. I had the camera set for “infinite burst.” A pretty fast card gets me about one shot/second. I couldn’t get a good white balance, so I had to fix the colors in Picasa.

To increase your chances of catching lightning, Chris, use a tripod and ca. ISO 800 ‘film’ speed — depending on the ambient light. Set the shutter at f16 or f11, again, depending on ambient light, and use the “Bulb” shutter speed setting. Focus the lens on infinity with the camera pointed in the general direction of the lightning flashes. Use a wide(er) angled lens — say, under 90mm.

Press the shutter release and keep your finger on it (keeps it open on Bulb) and wait with the shutter open. Just stand there, without moving. After a few good ‘illuminations’ take your finger off the shutter so it closes. Otherwise count to about “one-thousand-twelve.” I’d say use a cable release to minimize camera shake, but that doesn’t work on these modern cameras-without-cable-release-access-shutter-buttons. If you do have a cable-release-friendly shutter button, try finding the kind of cable release with a locking screw — to further protect from camera jiggle.

When I was little, my dad used to do this with his 4×5 Speed Graphic while looking out over the South Dakota prairie from our air-force-base-quarters lawn (ca. “ASA” 50 film, so the lens stayed open for minutes at a time). I now do it with a Nikon SLR, but any camera with a bulb setting will do, although with film cameras you don’t get the instant feedback (oh, how lazy we grow).

If you’re using a film camera, track the data in a notebook so that the next time you try to capture lightning, you can gauge whether to increase/decrease one of the factors.
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Or buy a huge memory card. ;> (I never thought of that tactic, Daryl)