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  • Lightning Photography

    Comments appreciated...I figured I'd stick it here in O/T, if a mod wants to move this one, feel free to. Anyways, on to the shot...the background's washed out to white because of the constant background lightning...


  • #2
    Do you mind sharing your camera settings, Joe?

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    • #3
      Promise to not call bullshit on me?




      It's a standard 35mm SLR camera (Vivitar) with a 205mm zoom lens (the shot was taken at 85mm), and Kodak Gold 400ISO film. Nothing else...except that I left the shutter wide open and got lucky

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      • #4
        Have tried this myself and what you have to do is to close (!) the aperture so that you get a longer exposure time. You can leave the shutter open almost for hours when out in the field where no artificial lighting destroys your picture and with this collect lightnings in the frame.

        In the city I always did 30 seconds exposures with the aperture almost fully closed as there is always way too much light! With the aperture closed you also can block out some of the ambient lighting.

        As I am novice for myself, ask Colin .


        The Tupolev Tu-114.
        World speed record holder for turboprop aircraft.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Kwashiorkor
          Have tried this myself and what you have to do is to close (!) the aperture so that you get a longer exposure time. You can leave the shutter open almost for hours when out in the field where no artificial lighting destroys your picture and with this collect lightnings in the frame.

          As I am novice for myself, ask Colin .
          Well I'm still a noob with the camera, but if I'm not mistaken, the 350D only allows up to 30sec exposure? How do you leave the shutter open for hours other than connecting to the computer software thing

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          • #6
            Well, first of all I used an analog camera . But with a (D)SLR which is equipped accordingly you can plug in a remote cord (I hope it's called like this in English) and trigger the shutter with that thing. Mine also has a lock function so if I set my camera on "BULB" and lock the trigger, my camera leaves the shutter open until I decide to release it again.

            I never did it for hours but a few minutes and it worked. I don't know if the 350D is able to do anyting like that but I for myself wouldn't do such a long exposure with a DSLR as it is very probable that you get a serious quality problem (noise, artifacts of noise-removement procedures)... film cameras are the best thing to use when doing very long exposures.


            The Tupolev Tu-114.
            World speed record holder for turboprop aircraft.

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            • #7
              Ya, I guess you're right about the quality...
              but on the other hand, I've been debating for a while whether to get the remote control thing or not. It's not fun holding down the shutter during bulb exposure!

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              • #8
                I'm gonna be getting one too...hopefully it'll make it easier to take lightning pics...and maybe let me do it from my car, so I don't get soaked!

                Also, any recommendations on film to use in the future? Somehow, I get the impression that standard 400ISO film probably isn't the best thing to be going after lightning with...

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                • #9
                  Your impression might be right ...

                  I use a Fuji Provia 100F slide film for most purposes. So I did with lightnings. Would be better if you could get hold of a film with even lower ISO as then you can increase your exposure times accordingly. I don't know of any slide film (don't use negative material too often) besides the Velvia 50 which is extremely colour saturated. There are some Black&White ones but this isn't really a choice for lightnings .


                  The Tupolev Tu-114.
                  World speed record holder for turboprop aircraft.

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