Lightning has always generated wonder and awe for me. Below are the results of my first attempts at capturing and processing image files of lightning. Most of these were unplanned; lightning was already happening and I drove to the far side of the neighborhood and set up my tripod and pointed towards the area that had the lightning activity. The first few blocks of images and movies were taken in two night's time from Peoria, Arizona; northwest side of Phoenix.
ALWAYS exercise caution and respect towards the weather elements. Not from personal experience, you will not see the strike that may kill or injure you.
All these movies and images were captured using a Sony CyberShot DSC-S90 (Thanks to my wife for letting ME use HER camera). I set the camera into movie mode, adjusted the settings on the camera, put the camera on the tripod, and began shooting! Because I have just started this project, camera memory is unfortunately minimal. At 512Mb and the Movie Quality = FINE, there is about six minutes of storage. To accomodate for reduced storage capacity, I have been shooting twenty second increments. That way if there is no strike in that attempt, I immediately delete the file.
Needless to say, I have become very good at deleting the files on the fly. In time, I will get a bigger memory card so I can shoot more movies; there have been times when I had to go home to download the movies and missed some awesome strikes.
Once a movie is kept for downloading, the average frame count of a strike is about seven to twenty frames; I have one strike that is about one and a half seconds long. At thirty frames per second (30 fps), that is almost forty-five frames of activity! That particular strike was a repeating main channel strike.
Settings I used for the camera when taking movies of lightning:
- Focus to infinity.
- White Balance to 'Auto'.
- Metering Mode to 'Multi'. (The strike is not always going be in the right spot for metering.)
- EV=0 (zero). (EV = Exposure Value, 0 is usually the default value.)
- Movie Quality to '640Fine'. (As an experiment to save memory on the card, I set the quality to '640Standard'. The strike itself was the same quality as the 'fine' setting, but when looking away from the strike within the image, IMHO, image compression was very apparent.)
- Use a tripod. (Metal objects and lightning myth debunked here.)
Over time, I find myself learning the rhythm of each storm. Sometimes the strikes are lengthy between successful captures, other times they are regular and rapid. I am learning to pay attention where other activity is occuring (like internal cloud disharges) so I can determine when to start the camera; sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.
The movies of the strikes have been slowed from 1/30th of a second to 1/10th of a second so the detail of the strike can be viewed without being rushed. The movies pause approximately 1.25 seconds before restarting.
Thanks for looking, ENJOY!
Glenn Johnson
Most Recent Additions |
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 2007:02/14, 18:17, 12 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:19, 12 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:20, 26 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:21, 11 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:22, 22 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:22, 15 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:23, 11 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:24, 17 frames.  2007:02/14, 18:29, 17 frames. |
 Stacking five non-black frames of a strike.  Stacking four non-black frames of a strike.  Stacking four non-black frames of a strike.  Stacking three non-black frames of a strike.  Stacking four non-black frames of a strike. |
 2006:08/31, 19:44, 16 frames.  2006:08/31, 19:33, 20 frames.  2006:07/25, 23:59, 11 frames.  2006:07/26, 00:09, 9 frames.  2006:07/25, 19:57, 29 frames.  2006:07/24, 22:25, 16 frames.  2006:07/24, 22:18, 20 frames. |
 Stacking two adjacent frames of a strike.  Stacking the two non-black frames of a strike that lasted only five frames. |
