Lightning Bolt

Capturing a lightning strike in a photo is mostly a matter of timing and luck, while ensuring that you’re not in danger of being struck.

Having never taken any pictures of lightning, I was given an opportunity by a thunderstorm that came up suddenly on a hot evening in the middle of Iowa.

While visiting relatives, this thunderstorm appeared in the night sky. It was a long distance away, so there was no rain to damage my equipment and I was in no danger of being struck. But not having had any experience with lightning, I was learning as I went along. One key was to use a tripod and a long shutter speed. I experimented with shutter speeds of 1/2 second to 4 seconds, and for this particular case, settled in on 1.0 second as the best shutter speed, with a wide open aperture (f/4.5 – 5.6 with this lens).

Lightning Across a Pond

I think normally a longer shutter speed would work better – but I was limited due to the amount of light polution in the picture. As you can see in this picture, I was shooting across a pond, with the thunderstorm far in the distance.

The lights are from the hotel parking lot, and while they reflect nicely across the pond, they limit my ability to use a longer shutter speed and get better illumination of the lightning bolt.

If I had been out in the country side, away from city lights, I would use a longer exposure (as much as 20-30 seconds), and could trip the shutter and just wait for the lightning to strike. In this case, I had to take a lot of pictures, most of which did not capture anything.

Distant Thunderstorm

The lightning was not the only amazing sight, however. Just watching the night sky light up from behind the large, dark clouds was amazing.

This picture is from the same location, but is focused more on the clouds and the lightning obscured by the clouds, rather than attempting to capture a single lightning strike.

The effect is to get a distant glow and emphasize the contrast between dark and light.

All of the pictures were taken with ISO 400 (which has higher light sensitivity), using a medium range focal length of about 150 mm.