>>drove to a remote bridge on the farm (with a great looking cypress
tree
>>framing the horizon), framed my shot, set to underexpose 2 stops, and
let
>>'er fly. During the exposure, anywhere from 2 to 5 flashes of heat
>>lightning would occur (sometimes different colors), so I was sure I'd
get
>>good shots (snip)
>>After shooting a half dozen exposures, I thought I should perhaps
>>flash the cypress tree to get it better defined, and freeze motion
>>(the wind was blowing pretty strong), so I started my exposure, gave
>>it 3 or 4 seconds, and then fired a hand held flash (Sunpack 433D) at
>>the cypress tree. Did this a couple of times, had lots of heat
>>lightning activity on the horizon, and was sure I'd gotten SOMETHING
>>useable.> (snip)
I remember reading up a method for photographing lightning, years ago,
in a library book whose title I've forgotten. The objective was to get
pictures of lightning strikes against a dark background with,
optionally, an object in the foreground that has been 'light painted',
such as the cypress tree suggested. Fork lightning (cloud-to-ground,
alias 'thunder-bolt lightning') is usually more dramatic than sheet
lightning (cloud-to-cloud, alias 'heat lightning').
My understanding of the basic method is to:
(a) mount the camera on a tripod, pointing in the general direction
from which lightning has been occurring, using a moderately wide-
angle lens (e.g. 28mm)
(b) select aperture of about f4-f8, for film speed ~200 ISO
(this may need some experimentation!)
(c) select manual mode and the 'B' shutter speed
(d) open the shutter and wait for lightning flashes to occur; you can
be light-painting a foreground object while waiting
(e) after the required number of flashes (say 3 or 4) have occurred in
the area of the sky covered by the lens, close the shutter.
I believe the use of auto mode is pointless, because all this will do
is to cause the camera to wait until either (a) there have been so many
flashes or, (b) for urban locations, the amount of ambient light from
city lights reflected in the clouds has built up, that a 'normal'
exposure is calculated to have occurred. It also limits the exposure
time to the maximum interval supported by the camera in auto mode (e.g.
2 minutes for OM-2N) and there is no guarantee that there will be
sufficient lightning activity during that interval.
This is all theoretical, however, as I have never actually tried doing
it! (My 2 cents)
Ray
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