So we are having one of those great summer thunderstorms- the kind with the hot, damp wind and the rustling tree tops, complete with the strobe light lightning and rumbling thunder, and I decided to try and take some pictures and try to catch some lightning strikes. It turns out that I am a terribad photographer, and should probably stick to taking pictures of stationary obese cats. Every picture I took turned out like something out of Van Gogh’s Starry Night sans stars. Here is a sample:
It appears some camera basics are in order. I have a Sony Cybershot DSC-H10. What setting should I be using for this kind of shot?
Any tips or hints?
Notorious P.A.T.
I would use every permutation of setting and flash and focus until you found one that works. Also, I’ve found that it’s next to impossible to take a good picture without a lot of light, so you might be doomed to failure no matter what. but hey, there’s nothing wrong with basing your oeuvre on large stationary cats.
Svensker
I think you’ve actually captured a shot of the rare giant hedgehog licking a tree — a little known natural phenomenon.
Advice for better camera work? Hire a photographer.
Laura W
1) I told you to get the Canon.
2) Read the damn manual. If I can, you can.
jerry 101
actually, i think the picture’s pretty cool as is.
Linkmeister
Speaking as one who spent half-an-hour on the shoulder of a two-lane road in New Mexico once trying to get pics of lightning with a Canon A-1 and failing miserably, I have nothing but commiseration and encouragement to offer you.
Oh, and photo editing software to adjust brightness and contrast when you get a pic that dark.
Joel
If you had a Canon, you could download CDHK, which opens up the options to high shutter speeds, motion detection, rapid fire exposure, the kind of stuff you need in order to take these kinds of photos without an SLR.
Death By Mosquito Truck
Put it in a drawer and save up for a better camera. My cybershot only takes blurry pictures so we only use it when we’re drinking.
Gebghis
The knowledge you seek is here:
kenrockwell.com
Best….H
Linkmeister
“If you had a Canon”
Man, are there Canon v. Nikon v. Sony wars similar to Mac-Windows wars?
Jon H
You should photoshop Tunch into that shot, baring his teeth. RAWR!
Check for controls on your camera for increasing the exposure time. The longest exposure you can get would be best, with a small aperture. ( I think that means a low F-stop, but I always forget)
Ecks
1) turn the flash OFF (it only illuminates out a few feet, so unless you’re taking pictures of scenery that is pretty much inside your living room your living room, when it’s on your camera is adjusting itself for nice brightly lit objects to appear that aren’t going to).
2) If you’re using a digital camera you’re going to have a bit harder time, as they tend not to be so great in low light conditions
3) If you’re using a point ‘n shoot camera #2 goes double
4) Put it on a tripod, or something else solid. When it’s dark out there’s not much light getting to the sensor at the back of your camera, so it leaves the shutter (I think of it as the “window” open longer to give time for more light to get in. And if the window is open longer, there’s more time for your widdle fingers to move it. Hence blurry.
5) If you’re using a cheap camera (yeah, mine sucks too) there’s probably a bit of a delay between you pushing the button and the picture taking. They make you pay extra for that to go away. It doesn’t matter much until you try to capture something that happens quickly and goes away, like a kid smiling, or, I dunno, say, lightning.
bago
More stability, less aperture, longer exposure?
neddie jingo
My sophomore-year roommate told a story on his elder brother, circa 1980.
Brother came in one night, dripping wet, pupils dilated to dinner-plate size, camera slung akimbo. “What have you been doing?” “Taking pictures of lightning!”
The LSD Sacrament may not have been a million miles away from this event. I recall once, later, under similar circumstances, being able to make lightning strike upon command. Hold still, fucker, that I may photograph you!
Only happened once, but man did I feel powerful.
Later that month, I made Dean’s List. There is no justice.
Jay C
Just to confirm virtually every other suggestion…..
Try a tripod for stability.
Longest exposure time you can get, coupled with:
Smallest aperture you can get.
Play around with it til it comes out right.
And at least be thankful that with digital technology, you can discard the crappy shots right away – instead of having to pay money, wait several days, and fumble around with bits of photo paper to see how crappy your pix came out.
SlothropRedux
I believe the Sony DSC-H10 has a “night shot” mode that keeps the shutter open for a long time – but you’d need to keep it steady with either a tripod OR just resting it on some solid object (a window sill, a railing, etc.). Check out the menus to see if you can find that mode, then take the pictures while trying to hold the cam SUPER STEADY. But the camera should be good for it!
JL
@Laura W: lol I get the hand me downs without manuals. Mine is a Sony something and I’m still working it out. It’s been a long time since I have got hand me downs but it is not a bad thing. You should see my cell phone.
Jon H
I think you want to use the ‘P’ setting on the mode dial, and then you can set the various parameters like shutter speed, exposure, etc.
John Cole
@Laura W: Not sure where it is. It was pretty thick and threatening.
/typicalmalewithnewtoy
Jim
If your camera makes movies try that. I was trying to photograph fireworks which is pretty much impossible with an old slow Sony Mavica but when I took them as movies I got something.
JGabriel
jerry 101:
I’m with Jerry on this one. That picture turned out pretty well for someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It might not be what you were going for – obviously the branches are moving and blurred – but it works on its own terms. It conveys a sort of solemn or foreboding feeling.
.
Comrade Kevin
@Svensker:
Also known as Spiny Norman.
freelancer
That cybershot model has several modes for photography at night. First take a few picks with the Mode Dial set to the “ISO ^” Icon
if that doesn’t work, change the Camera mode to SCN, and select either Twilight (the Crescent Moon icon) or Fireworks (ahem, the Fireworks Icon).
The Shutter will be open longer so you will have to keep the camera absolutely still if you don’t want blurry images.
JGabriel
@John Cole:
Freudian much?
.
Bill E Pilgrim
@freelancer:
And if none of that works, let the cat have a try.
Sometimes they just push the right buttons by accident. I’m not sure why.
Tim H
After looking at a review, i see there is a 30 sec max shutter on the camera. Use that and the smallest aperture you got. Use a tripod or park the camera on a car or something. Set the slowest ISO the camera has, 100.
If the exposures are too light, which they will be unless it’s night, get an ND or a polarizing filter to cut down the exposure.
Walker
Buy a tripod.
Even for an SLR, a digital camera has to have its shutter open forever to get a night shot. This means it has to be completely still (CCD technology was first used by telescopes with computer tracking). You will never get a good shot without a tripod.
The Raven
Lightning is very fast. You can’t predict it, or hit the shutter in time. The “trick” is to wait for it instead. So, if your camera will allow it, mount the camera on a tripod, estimate exposure (some digicams have a “night” feature, and that can do it–RTFM), and set up long exposures–8-10 seconds, maybe. Then make lots of exposures, and select the ones you want.
(Bet you didn’t know that ravens have color vision.)
freelancer
Second Walker’s Suggestion of a tripod.
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yes, cats are mysterious, and versatile creatures.
EDIT:FUWP
Laura W
@JGabriel:
I’m so glad I kept reading through before snatching that. (uh oh.)
Better you than me.
Jennifer
You definitely need a tripod, and you probably need a SLR with manual override to really get good lightning shots, and even then it’s a bit of a crapshoot – if the lightning is too close and the shutter’s open too long, it’s like a giant flashbulb illuminated everything and you just get a flat shadowless effect (which is kinda cool, but not really what you’re after).
Death By Mosquito Truck
This is why I paint all my storms.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Jeeze. My SLR camera allows for all these f-stop settings etc., and I have used 1000 ASA fillum and a tripod, and I STILL do not have a friggin’ picture of lightening. Forget digital camera. Goddam thing takes sharply-focused pictures of my windows.
I do have a nicely focused pic of the Hale-Bopp Comet we took with my old (Vietnam era) Nikon (before I lost the irreplaceable battery cover).
My suggestion: Buy a lightening print by Stieglitz or somebody famous. Enlarge it, sign it and frame it. Hang it on your living room wall. You can waste countless hours explaining camera settings and how you were able to take advantage of natural conditions with an automatic radar-motivated snapper of your own design.
Some girls love this, as a preliminary to (gasp!) marriage.
You will get laid so long as you postpone the ceremony.
Laura W
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: LOL x 12,987!
Bill E Pilgrim
@freelancer:
Mine once closed a piece of writing I was working on, renamed it, created a directory, and filed it away, all by walking on the keyboard.
This was before Windows, green screen, and that’s all we could figure afterward when it was missing from the screen and I finally found it named “blzt7ysergk” and filed in a sub-directory called “s9e8gg”.
I keep all my best writing in the s9e8gg folder to this day.
She also sat on my keys once, on the perfectly made bed, and calmly watched me spend an hour walking around the room searching for them, utterly baffled.
Comrade Luke
Ecks and Jay C nail 95% of it.
When you’re dealing with low light like this minimizing camera shake it the most crucial element.
Not knowing much about your camera, I’d suggest these things, in order:
– tripod is a must
– if your camera supports locking the mirror in the up position, turn that on
– if your camera has a remote control, use that
– start with it in ‘P’ mode, and note the settings it gives you for aperture & shutter speed
– if the picture taken using the above settings doesn’t work, increase the aperture (decreasing the shutter speed to balance it out) until you get an image you like
The truth is, the first bullet is most important without a tripod you’re not going to get a very clear image at night, no matter the rest of the list.
And you should definitely turn the flash off, unless you think it’s strong enough to illuminate the clouds in the sky :)
SrirachaHotSauce
Most lightning shots are time exposures made at night, when you can leave the lens open for a long enough period of time to make the odds of getting a lightning strike somewhat higher.
You will need a tripod and some patience for this. Storm photography takes infinite amounts of patience and forbearance. And some luck.
Martin
Give up on the lighting and just post some naked mopping falling pics instead.
Michael
I use a Canon, but I’m sure other manufacturers have this setting too…I use timed continuous shooting on a tripod to keep the camera shake down. I hit the button once, and walk away.
Thomas Levenson
For handy tripod stuff with a little camera, get a gorillapod. Costs about 20 bucks for the “original” one, which is all you need for cybershot; ten bucks more if you think you will ever want to hang an SLR with a short lens or a compact video camera. (That’s the one I have. They go up in size to handle the smaller pro-sumer video cameras, but by then you should be into real tripods for most stuff.)
With the g-pod (not, under any circumstances, to be confused with a j-pod), you can do all kinds of cool stuff, up to an including hanging your camera from pipes and so on. But it weighs next to nothing, can always be in your bag, and means that you have a firm base for your shots available to you at all times.
Linkmeister
Speaking of tripods, I have a Gorillapod which works very well for a small point-and-shoot; the product line goes up as camera weight does, too.
Linkmeister
Honest, I didn’t know Thomas Levenson was gonna post that! Look at the times of the posts! ;)
Tim F.
1. Find a vantage point with a good view and little or no nearby ambient light. The back yard of your building has too much light.
2. Put your camera on a tripod. Do not extend the center column to get extra height. With these exposures the extra shake is not worth it.
3. Narrow down your aperture and set your ISO to a daytime setting like 200 or 400. Why use a small aperture at night? Unless John measures his motor reflexes in the microseconds (snerk) and has a cam with no shutter lag (um actually, the DSC-H10 has superb shutter lag) you will need long exposures to capture lightning. Smaller aperture and lower ISO means longer exposure times which means more lightning bolts while the shutter is open.
4. Set a very long exposure. Test this on a less dangerous cloudy night. Think about whether you want foreground detail or not. If you want to see detail in the trees or buildings leave the shutter open for a long time; if you want black ground/trees go for shorter. I would guess a range between 1 min. and 10-20 sec.
5. Activate the exposure with some hands-off trigger like the self-timer, a remote control or a shutter cable. If it’s a night with a lot of lightning, just keep taking these until you get bored or run out of memory. If you’re lucky some will look like this.
Thomas Levenson
Also — if you want real control of your images with a digital camera, just buy the Leica Digilux 2 — about 6 Benjamins used. Out of date and all that, but the best fixed-lens digi cam I’ve ever used.
And it looks beyond cool, not that you are so superficial as to care about that.;)
JL
This is my hand me down without instructions…. It’s a Cybershot 3.2 and I think it has zoom but I can’t figure that part out..
Ash
Honestly, the only way you’re going to get a lightning shot is if you go into the future in a time machine, record the precise second of each lightning shot to the nanosecond, then go back in time and train your reaction time to be accurate at almost inhuman levels, then try it out.
chopper
does the sticker on the back say ‘hecho en mexico’ perchance?
Kim
if you don’t have a tripod, position the camera still on something like a buckwheat pillow (or a ziploc filled with uncooked rice) for your ideal angle, then like has been said before: lowest aperture (probably 2.8 or 3.5?), lowest ISO (100 or 200 probably), longest exposure (probably 30 seconds?)… and then use the 10-second timer to take the picture, that way your finger pushing the release won’t blur the image.
oh yeah, turn flash off too…. if you aren’t comfortable in the manual mode of the camera though, this might be more trouble than its worth
r€nato
what @Tim H said, though you might try setting for a faster ISO if you are not getting the results you want with the 30 sec. exposure and 100 ISO (I have a hunch that 30 seconds @ ISO 100 is still going to be too dark). You might try bumping up to the highest ISO value and longest exposure and then work your way down from there. Start by dropping the ISO from, say, 800 to 400. Lower ISO = less grainy image.
Good luck though, you will need lots of it; you’re really trying to push your camera well past what it was intended to do.
The best way to get night shots is with a digital SLR which allows you to shoot in RAW format , giving you a lot more options for manipulating the image in post-production. Your camera is likely shooting some sort of compressed JPEG format. If it allows you to shoot TIFF format, select that.
Oh and here’s another tip: your camera won’t have the option of a cable release which allows you to trip the shutter without touching the camera; for long exposures, it’s awfully easy to introduce a little bit of shake just by pressing the shutter button. So instead, use the self-timer function. Set it to the shortest length, say 2 seconds.
And yes, get a tripod. You can even get little pocket-sized fold-up tripods! Those might be just the thing for you if you don’t plan on using a tripod all that much in the future other than occasional night shots.
Tim F.
Also, like Ecks I suggest only using the flash on things that are close enough to throw a very large rock at. Make sure to turn it off for work like this or your camera will go crazy.
r€nato
@Ash:
not true, getting a great lightning shot just takes knowing how to set up your digital SLR (esp white balance) and the right exposure and a memory card with lotsa storage space (or several of them with less memory)… a commenter already said it up-thread. You get the right exposure and ISO and just keep tripping your shutter. If it’s a good storm, you will get some nice shots out of the 200 or so you shoot :-) You really ought to shoot RAW for best results and those take up beaucoup memory very quickly.
The trick is knowing what the exposure should be for those bursts of bright light and then playing with exposure/aperture depending on how many lightning strikes you’d like to see in your final image. So really, it takes either an active storm or enough experience that you don’t need to ‘test’ your settings very much.
r€nato
I swear I did not click “submit” twice.
Rosali
Warning! I learned the hard way that lightning can kill your computer. Lightning struck my house 3 weeks ago and ruined my computer. I had a surge protector to protect my computer and other equipment. Unfortunately, the phone/DSL jack that was plugged into my computer was not protected and my computer was zapped and inoperable right after the lightning strike. It sounded like a truck bomb exploded right outside my window when the lightning struck. If any tech people out the have advice, I welcome it. My computer no longer starts but the fan runs when I start the power.
r€nato
I swear I did not click “submit” twice.
r€nato
oh, one more thing: if it is possible to turn off the autofocus and focus manually… do it. And set the focus to infinity. If you compose your shot such that there are bushes or trees about in the middle of your viewfinder, the autofocus may well try to focus on those instead of the storm.
Fulcanelli
@Tim F.: John, if your pix come out like the ones in Tim’s link on a little cybershot point n’ shoot get in the ‘effin house and hide in the cellar with Tunch. That’s way too close for comfort.
Tim F.
LAN cables plug into the motherboard, so I’d guess the ‘brain’ of your computer has become a coaster. My advice is: (1) buy a new computer, and (2) save your old hard drive to use as a backup drive in the new computer. If you’re lucky the hard drive is ok.
Alternatively, you could go full Rambo and try to replace the motherboard yourself. If you ask a repair guy about replacing what probably died my guess is that it will cost not much less than a new comp.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@Linkmeister:
Yep. It’s mainly Canon vs. Nikon though, with the Sony fans as the Linux hippies standing off to one side and taking shots at everybody.
Tim F.
Also Rosali, that is one reason why I use a wireless internet router.
Jerome McDonough
There’s a pretty good article on photographing lightning at http://www.weatherscapes.com/techniques.php?cat=lightning&page=lightning
Basically, you have to have your camera on a tripod with a cable release, because the trick is to open up the shutter and leave it open. It is not possible to snap a photograph of lightning on your own without insane amounts of luck. You need to set up a decent composition shot on a tripod with a cable release, and when things get exciting, open up the shutter and leave it open. If your camera has an ISO speed setting, you want it low, 100 or 200. Your aperture will very depending on how far away the lightning is. If it’s in your backyard, an aperture in the f/16 to f/22 range is probably what you want. If it’s in the 5-10 kilometer range, somewhere around f/4-f/5.6 should do.
Stimpy
@Rosali:
If you are very lucky your hard drive is still OK. One or more of the following components is most certainly NOT OK.
– Your power supply
– You motherboard
– You graphics card (if it is on the Motherboard then it is certainly fried if the motherboard is fried)
– Anything else plugged into the computer.
Back in a previous life as a TV repair guy/computer repair guy we used to make a lot of money right around the thunderstorm season. Go figure.
I would try replacing the power supply on the computer to see if that fixes it. If not, then you can try to put your hard drive into an existing computer to see if your data is still there.
If the data is still there you should assume the hard drive is about to fail. Transfer your data to a new hard drive and treat this one as a unsafe backup.
Robertdsc-iphone
“Obese”? How I long for the days when Tunch was “undertall”.
How is the little fella, anyway?
Fulcanelli
That’s some sage advice from those advising a tripod, no flash, manual focus and a remote shutter control device or timer.
Other things to ponder: Can your camera shoot short segments of video? Video your target area and see if you catch a strike. If you do, load it on your pc/mac and if you have video editing software you can watch it frame by frame and wind up with a good shot.
Too dark (underexposed) or too light (overexposed) is obviously undesirable, but I’ve heard overexposed is worse on digital. Not enough data. If you have P-shop, paint shop pro, etc, you might be able salvage a shot that’s a little too dark. Too light, not so much.
Rosali
Thanks for your advice. I bought a new, cheaper computer and was able to remove the hard drive from my old computer and found out that the it still worked and had my data. I’ll use it as a back-up. I was hoping to save/reconstruct my old computer since it was more expensive/upgraded from my replacement computer. If I can’t save it, it was an expensive lesson learned. I set up a wireless router with the DSL modem on my new computer to, I hope, avoid the lightning problem.
Stevenovitch
Can you adjust the aperture and shutter speeds with that camera? You’ve basically have 3 variables here and they’re really simple.
Aperture(or f/stop): More light for less focus… if you open it all the way you’ll get a brighter picture but you won’t be able to keep as much in focus, this shouldn’t matter if you’re taking a picture of the sky as it’s well past the infinite focus line.
Shutter Speed: More light for less sharpness… if you lower the shutter speed you’ll get a brighter picture but unless you are superman and hold the camera ultra still the picture will blur from your minor hand movements
ISO/Gain/Whatever they want to call it now: More light for less quality… you can increase ISO up to get a brighter picture but it will be very grainy.
You just have to find the desirable compromise between these three. If you’re taking a picture at night I’d say lower the f/stop to the lowest since focus isn’t going to matter that much and digital cameras have an absurdly large depth of field anyway. It’s up to you to figure out what you want from the other two.
Jennifer
I had a power surge or lightning strike fry a power supply on a computer once (also plugged into a surge protector) and the bitch was, until I paid to get it fixed and hooked it back up, I didn’t know that the same electrical event had permanently screwed up the color on the monitor. It was always pink after that.
I learned my lesson and bought an external hard drive and disc cloning program (which is also a lifesaver when it comes to other issues). For $100 or so, it’s well worth it.
AnneW
@Rosali:
Yeah, we found out that lightning traveled through phone lines back in the early 90s. Our 2400 baud modem was fried, but luckily the computer wasn’t. They do make surge protectors for phone & cable lines, but wireless is probably the way to go anyway.
Laura W
@Tim F.: Tim, even with the wireless router, should I shut down the Mac with lightning? Or put it to sleep, at least? I unplug the power and let it run on battery, but always get very paranoid in thinking that the lightning is gonna travel through the wireless whatever somehow and fry the MacBook. I know that’s very technical for you, but I think you get my point? (And I’ve wanted to ask someone this forever, so here’s my Big Chance to look even more stoopid!)
I watched lightning ignite a tree across the street from me in CO from my bedroom window just as my iMac was dialing into my ISP via the phone line. Yes. I lost the iMac, and every single thing I had on it for a few years. I am terrified of lightning now when it comes to my computer.
db
Holy Fajeezus, JC!!!!
That is one awesome image you captured…. whatever it is you are doing, keep doing it; and stop trying to replicate what others might be doing. (I wish I could come up with some Twain proverb about how the best things that happen in art are mere accidents.)
Gorgeous!
harlana pepper
I do like the pic as is and yes, it does remind me of Starry Night
cool
jTh
Just a couple of notes, but first, camera shake isn’t as big a deal as some people are saying – if you’re opening your shutter for 20 or 30 seconds, a moment of shake isn’t going to matter much, especially not if your subject (the lightning) is virtually instantaneous within your shutter duration. (It’s effectively freezing the action with itself as your flash.)
The tripod or some firm resting place IS key though.
On the other hand, to r€nato’s point, your AF may be a real problem – most digicams don’t offer an easy/ongoing way to switch into manual focus and stay there. However, if you aim a focus point at a distance treeline, you should be okay – after a certain distance, all focus is the same, “to infinity.” That threshold depends on how far you’re zoomed out or wide – it usually comes closer when you’re wide. So mount it on the tripod with that focus point in mind.
Finally, to a point WAY above, you really can’t beat reading the manual for attempting challenging situations. Daunting though it may be, give it a glossing over (/look at the pictures) to get a sense of what’s in there, and then zoom in on parts that interest you.
Some time in the future, try fireworks for practice (having read up in advance), if you’d like to be prepared for lightning next time around.
spot check billy
Further warning – there is no surge protector made for the consumer market that will protect from anything like a direct lightning strike. If the strike was close enough to send a fatal charge through the phone/DSL line it ran right through the surge protector, too. Not that you need another expense right now, but pitch it and replace.
If anyone tries to sell you a surge protector that will protect from a nearby lightning strike, run don’t walk. You’re being conned.
freelancer
So your premise is that fireworks are gonna happen more frequently than thunderstorms?
Rosali
@Laura W:
After the lightning strike/truck bomb sound outside my window, I have become so afraid of lightning. I was thinking of visiting a friend in South Africa but, after seeing the re-enactments of the lightning strikes on that Air France plane in the Atlantic, I am terrified of traveling that route.
The Pale Scot
Oh goody,
a cameraphile gathering;
Question;
I’m photoshop savvy, unemployed/broke and looking to buy a camera for photos of restaurants specifically for a website and general scenerey type stuff.
Its between a Fujifilm Finepix A920 and a Canon PowerShot A1000. would like to get a Finepix F30 but too much $$, are there any others in the less thatm 175. It seems you need to spend at least 300.00 so going between that and 175 doesn’t make any sense. the fuji f50 and f100 aren’t as good as the f30 was.
The only concern is good photos, = low noise, realistic saturation, full band of tones, I can fix anything else in PS.
The Fiji F30 seems to be the best non SLR out there as far as photo quality is concerned; it doesn’t have bells and whistles; but the lowlight pics and detail are great.
The Pale Scot
“Also known as Spiny Norman.”
DIMSDALE!!
Tanks break you know, general
mr. whipple
I wonder if john tried the google? something like ‘photographing lightning’.
http://www.hillsrain.com/lightning/lightning_tute.shtml
mcd410x
Stevenovitch is well on target:
Since you’re going to leave the shutter open awhile, you can take that variable out of the equation (for the most part; at high ISO, the longer you leave the shutter open the more grainy the picture will be), leaving ISO vs. aperture.
You should be able to go up to ISO 400 (or even 800 depending on the quality of the sensor/film) w/o too much grain showing. Which leaves the aperture.
Too much aperture (too low an F-stop — they’re inversely proportional) and the amount of light from sky/clouds will be so great it’ll wash out the light from the lightning. Too little aperture (too high an F-stop) and the amount of light from the lightning won’t be enough to capture on the sensor/film.
It’s a process. (Your camera may not have the flexibility to manage all this).
When you’ve mastered lightning, then you can move on to meteors!
Jay C
@spot check billy:
Second the advice re the surge protectors: We built a summer house in a lightning-prone area, and were told to plug all sensitive equipment into surge-protected power strips, and plug them into surge-protected outlets (and fit a surge protector to the house mains also). It all works – so far: but the only way to be sure is to have a UL-rated lightning-rod system as well (if you can). Oddly, our architect and contractor though me weird for insisting on it: but it paid off the first summer we were there: two direct hits by lightning, and no damage to any electronics.
Oh, and Laura W: an electric charge (like lightning) can’t “travel” through a wireless connection: a router can get fried by a surge, but a connected computer can’t be affected, I don’t think.
Blogreeder
I see from this review that it does have manual mode. You can try different exposure lengths (with the tripod). I remember trying to get a picture of the full moon when I got my digital camera and all I got was a round white blur. I had to set it to manual and the exposure length to 1/2000 of a second for any detail.
Lord Faahtass
John in spite of what you say that picture is much better than you think. In fact I think its a pretty good one. I’d be pleased if I had taken it, and I’ve done a fair number of landscapes, both photographic and painting, including an entire portfolio’s worth for graduate school.
I am serious here. If you have any more I’d like to see them.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
You should use the “thunder and lightning” setting and not the “stationary obese cat” setting, it’s in the manual, page 39.
Seriously though what about using the camera’s movie setting for the thunder and lightning shots? Digital cameras take pretty decent movies and you could clip out the frames with the good stuff.
As far as getting a Canon, why? I’ve had three Sony digital cameras, a Cybershot DSC F707, a DSC R1 and a DSC T1 and they were all excellent. I took some great pictures with them and I have no idea how because it’s not as if I’m a great photographer. My only quarrel with Sony was being locked into the memory stick or memory stick duo format but the prices for memory sticks are now comparable to those for SD cards so that’s no longer the issue it used to be.
Lord Faahtass
I see (now that I’ve actually begun reading the comments) that others agree with me, viz, jerry 101 and JGabriel:
I would argue that at some level you did know what you were doing. It may have not been conscious but hey that’s how it usually operates. Of course if all the other pix in the series are incoherent then I’d say it was damned luck. But I doubt it because that is really more rare than people think, IMHO. You either have a sensitivity to what you see whether you are aware of what you are seeing or not, or you don’t.
trollhattan
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
You might be able to perch the thing on support of some sort (tripod) and use “fireworks” scene setting or somesuch, plus the self-timer and get something usable.
But P&S cameras aren’t made for the thinkin’ man (or wo-man) photog. Most of them suque. For about $10 more these days you can get an ess ell are.
mcd410x
Ops
mcd410x
Oh, and the amount of megapixels they’re trying to sell you on point-and-shoot these days is ridiculous. I have a dSLR and I get around 6 megapixels—that’s enough to blow up a full-frame photograph to 13 inches x 19 inches if I’m shooting in RAW mode.
You really don’t need more than 6 megapixels unless you’re going to be making posters—and then why are you shooting with a point-and-shoot?
(And if you’ve never been to the site Luminous Landscape, you should!)
Chuck Butcher
Ain’t technology great? At age 12 I took a lightning shot with an actual Brownie that got half a dozen flashes and one striking into Lake Erie using a picnic table as a tripod and the manual shutter control – involved pushing lever down and then up when I figured I was done. It was an astonishing photo…
So now I’ve got an Olympus 35mm w/lenses & filters and a Fuji Finepix S5100. The Fuji takes nice scooter pics….
asiangrrlMN
@Svensker: Ok, I’ve only read to your comment, but you win the thread. Ha! Hedgehog licking a tree….
Lesley
The image is less Van Gogh, more Blair Witch Project.
The Raven
For people who are looking to pick out cameras, I highly recommend The Online Photographers T.O.P. ten. Mike Johnston offers a range, from very inexpensive to very expensive.
Steeplejack
Haven’t read the thread yet, as I’m coming in late, so I apologize if I’m repeating/contradicting something or making a fool of myself, but from my non-digital photog days–way back in the day–the secret to good lightnin’ shots is time exposure. As in: you open up the shutter, wait for some lightning, then close the shutter. I think these new-fangled digital cameras have a “B” exposure setting or something that accomplishes this.
And I don’t mean open up the shutter in the afternoon because you heard there’s going to be a storm later that night. We’re talking 20-60 seconds, probably, depending on the amount of ambient light in the shot you’ve got framed, which will gradually “fill in” the exposure. But if you’ve got a good thunderstorm with lightning going, you should be able to get some good shots within a 20-60 span.
And a tripod is pretty much essential. Also.
bago
@Bill E Pilgrim: dir /og-d /s/b * would find you what you want.
bago
You can also bug my friend Sparky. Here he is grilling some ramps.
asiangrrlMN
Oh, and I second Laura W. Shoulda went with the Canon. At least, that’s what my brother is always telling me.
Steeplejack
Cole! I looked up your camera and see that in manual mode it has a 30-second shutter speed option. You could use that. It would be nice if you could launch the 30-second “take,” then nip it after you’ve caught the lightning, but that would be something to take up with your user’s manual. In any case, if you’re pointed in a suitably dark direction, a 30-second exposure should get you some nice lightning.
That’s the technique in a nutshell.
Joel
@Joel: Corrected:
CHDK, for Canon Hack Development Kit.
The thing is awesome for any point and shoot Canon owners, like meeself.
Linkmeister
tripletee: Heh.
Well, I’ve been a Canon owner for 30-something years, but I’ve got no gripe agin’ Nikon. I still use my film A-1 once in a while; when I went cheap digital I bought a Canon SD100. It turned out to have a sensor flaw and Canon replaced it for me with a refurbished SD600 for nuthin’. Getting that kind of customer service makes it hard for me to switch.
Jeff Berardi
So there’s some website recommendations in this thread… Here, let me do a rough credibility/sanity translation for the BJ crowd:
Nate Silver
Paul Krugman
Rush Limbaugh
anna missed
Use low ASA setting (50 0r 100)
Use tripod
Set small f stop (11-16)
Set on B shutter speed and hold between 20 40 secs, unless you get lightening then close
Try to time beginning exposure to when lightening is expected
Focus on infinity
anna missed
Best use wide angle lens, or wide end of zoom
Bill E Pilgrim
@bago:
You mean after I figured out that the poem had vanished because the cat had walked on the keyboard?
Or is there actually a command that tells you “cat walked on keyboard and renamed things”?
Now that would be useful.
The cat was nowhere to be found, of course, and wasn’t talking in any case.
In any case after that I figured the cat can handle technical gadgets better than any of us, just keeps that under wraps so as to have fun with us.
bago
@Bill E Pilgrim:
dir /og-d /s/b/t:w *
Translated to english: Show all files in any directory on this volume using a barebones format in the reverse order of the time they were last written to, grouping directories before files.
Bill E Pilgrim
@bago:
Yeah but my point is that I didn’t know it had been saved to any directory, just that it had vanished ;) Once I realized what had happened, finding it was the easy part.
Though good tip, thanks. I still want the one that says “Show all activities of the cat within the last day or so”.
Robert Sneddon
Second the recommendation for CHDK on a Canon camera. Even cheapass models you can pick up in pawnshops for forty bucks will accept the CHDK firmware.
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief
For lightning pictures you can download and execute a script that runs under CHDK. It basically watches for a very rapid change in light levels on the camera sensor and then takes the picture automatically. Just leave it running and let it do its thing. The big advantage of this way of doing things is that you’re not committed to using long exposure times.
Similar CHDK scripts also do motion detection. You could use them to, say, record action shots of Da Tunch.
HeartlandLiberal
1. If you can get the camera to realize it needs to focus at infinity, use Program mode, then use the controls that allow you to set an override for the EV (Exposure Value) and set that to a + value (you will probably have 4-5 optional steps up, it varies by camera), forcing the camera to automatically try to set settings that overexpose the picture. Turn off the flash. The range of the flash is very short, and will only produce a nice dark blob of nothing like you showed us, because you basically successfully illuminated the air for about 10-15 feet in front of the camera. Shooting something like this, though, makes it virtually impossible for even the finest autofocus program to figure out just what the h*** you are trying to focus on, so the shot gets away while your camera lens makes funny noises laughing at you as it moves in and out trying to find something to focus on.
2. It may be you have to go to manual setting mode, in order to override the autofocus, so you can set focus to infinity (the little figure eight lying peacefully recumbent, you know, like Tunch). Again, no flash. Then try setting the F stop to the smallest number the camera will allow (which will produce the largest aperture and allow the most light. Don’t ask, I didn’t create this system). Then try setting shutter speed to 1/60th. That is just about the slowest speed a human can get a hand held picture without blurring the image. I have managed to get rising moon shots at 1/30th, but it is not easy. If you have a tripod, now is a time to mount the camera on it, so you can set low shutter speeds and hold the camera still during exposure.
P.S. I have Pentax D100 and D10 Digital SLRs. Reading the manuals is a sometimes irritating exercise, but sometimes unavoidable in order to figure out how to use the multiple controls and programs built into the newer generation of SLR cameras. Especially since the first thing you will discover that not all features are available in all program modes.
3. Did I mention you should turn off the flash?
jTh
@ freelancer 72
Well, my premise was that fireworks are a lot easier – they stay in the sky longer, you’ve got some notice as you watch them go up, and you know where/which direction to aim your tripod. Also, just much higher likelihood of getting something cool (trails and so forth), ergo “good practice.”
@ trollhattan 83
Well, I’m surely a dSLR guy, but on the other hand, one can learn a lot about manual photography from a digicam with an M mode – I certainly did. By the time I got my first SLR, I could walk out the door and already knew how to use it. (Just took me about two hours to get the hang of holding so much more weight steadily.) Digicams might not be made for the thinking man, but the thinking man can indeed learn a lot from “practicing” with them.
Surly Duff
So it was nothing like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and more like just plain night.
wrb
Tripod & long exposure
Throwin Stones
Buy a Nikon?
grendelkhan
I can second what everyone else here has said–put it on a tripod, focus on infinity, close the aperture and drop the ISO as far as possible, and take long exposures. Here’s the result that I got when I did it a few years ago; I was using an SLR, but so long as you have enough manual control on yours, it should still work.
DrDave
@Linkmeister:
No, it’s just a Canon v. Nikon war. Neither Canon owners nor Nikon owners (this probably applies mostly to SLR owners) give much thought to the fact that there other brands worthy of consideration beyond Nikon and Canon.
Fr33d0m
I don’t have the time to read all the comments looking for this thought so excuse me if it is in there.
All the points about tripods and exposure times are good but you should also consider movement you cannot control. Since most storms include wind, the tree movement is likely to create some fuzziness in your image.
Also, if your camera has a raw mode, use it and something like rawstudio to make fine adjustments to the exposure.
Finally, if you are not trying to capture lightening, try bracketing your shots–that is starting at one aperature setting and moving up (or down) one or two stops for each of the shots. Bracket three or four shots to get a wide range of aperature settings.
There are some things you can do with flashes if you have the duckets to drop on some remote firing tech.
Here are some good links to help overall:
http://digital-photography-school.com/
http://strobist.blogspot.com/
Tim H.
One other thing if you have photo-editing software:
If you’re lucky enough to catch a strike, do a dark exposure using the same settings (put on the lens cap). Long exposures are always noisier, and you can use the dark exposure to get rid of the noise in Photoshop or Paintshop.
Robert
Low light conditions usually prompt either a flash, which is not what you want here, or a longer exposure which is what you’re looking for. Use a tri-pod and the countdown timer release.
E Schneider
There’s actually a pretty easy way to photograph lightning, assuming you’ve got the right weather conditions:
Trying to photograph the lightning as it happens is…hard. If you’ve seen it, it’s probably too late to hit the shutter, so here’s what you do:
Mount the camera on a tripod and point it in a likely location for the lightning. Set the camera for as long an exposure as you can, I like an hour for something like this. (This is one of those things that works better with a cheap film camera.) Trip the shutter without shaking the camera (ideally with a remote cord, but if it’s dark enough, it really doesn’t matter if you bump the camera a bit. :)
Now just wait the hour and if there’s a lightning strike while the shutter’s open, you’ve got it. That’s all there is to it.
You might want to try it a few times and adjust the aperture more or less open to adjust the exposure to taste, but that’s the basic approach. Works every time, if you get lightning.
-es
Comrade Darkness
Late to this thread, but I think the pic you posted is quite evocative.
Jane
Am I the only one who knows what “Death by Mosquito Truck” refers to?
Brian
My gut feeling is, treat lightning the way you would fireworks. Your camera has a fireworks setting, but I don’t know what it involves.
My own experience shooting fireworks says that the way to do it is: set the apeture as closed as possible (often f11 or f15, but even f22 if that’s an option), use the manual shutter setting, wait for the “foomf!” of the cannon firing to open the shutter, and hold it open until the firework has gone off and has “opened” completely.
Obviously, there’s no prompt ahead of time for lightning (except for the tingly feeling that says you need to move from where you’re standing!) but if you set your camera on a tripod, aim at an area of sky, and hold the shutter open for, say, 10 seconds, you might have some luck.