How to do Lightning Photography

A recent series of pictures I posted on Facebook, seems to have gathered a lot of attention. So I figured I would use this week’s blog posting to show how I took these pictures.

The photos were a series of photo’s I shot during a thunderstorm in Seoul. I was already getting my camera gear together for the Seoul Lantern Festival the next day. When I started hearing the thunder crashes. Were the North Koreans attacking?

Since I already had my brain trying to get itself wrapped around the correct settings for night photography, the light bulb finally went off and I realize what an awesome opportunity this presented!!! Especially since I bought that remote shutter release!

Items you will need.

1) Tripod (I put this first, because if you don’t have a tripod, if won’t matter if you don’t have a camera. You NEED a tripod!)
2) A digital or film camera capable of long, or bulb exposures.
3) A remote shutter release (I use the Canon TC-80N3)

Place your camera on your tripod, and adjust the camera to the lowest ISO setting. You also want to stop the lens down to a narrow aperture. F8 will work. In these photos I used f22. Though as you notice I did not get enough exposure of the surrounding buildings.

In the photo’s below, I was far enough away from the buildings to focus on them, but you can also use the lens’ infinity focus. I was shooting between 32 – 35mm. Wide angle works best, because you don’t know were in the sky the lightning strike will be.

Once you have everything setup for your liking. Put your camera in Bulb exposure mode (On Canon’s this is the B icon on your mode selector). Connect your remote control and test that everything is working. You can also test exposure times to deduce roughly the longest period you can keep your shutter open before your background is over exposed. The key here is that the lightening strike will be your flash.

Now wait for a lightening flash, then hold the shutter button down. I was releasing the shutter once every 40 seconds to a minute if there was no strike, and immediately releasing the shutter on a lightening strike.

There you have it, a relatively cheap and easy way to shoot lightening!!