I have two ways of getting good shots of lightning. One, if you have a bulb mode, and especially if you have a cable release, just set it on bulb and about f/16 and hold the shutter open until lightning hits and then release the shutter. You can probably get away without the cable release too. If you don't have bulb mode, you can just do long exposures, like 15 seconds, or the longest you can get, with the aperture stopped way down (the lightning will be plenty bright).
One I haven't tried yet, and only works with Canon Powershot cameras, is the open source scripting firmware with motion detect apparently is fast enough to just leave the camera sitting there and it'll snap a picture when the lightning strikes. I've only used it to take pics of birds at the feeder.
I do have a Powershot so the first option wouldn't work. I couldn't get the firmware to load. I may have to find and dig out the other cable that came with the camera & see if it allows for loading back into the camera.
I was using the "night snapshot" setting. With that setting, it appears that there is usually (at least for me anyway) at least a full 5 second delay between the time I press the shutter and the camera takes the picture. I even tried anticipating the lightning which is the picture I got above. I will have to try all the other settings in the future to see what happens.
The powershots don't have bulb mode, but they do have a manual mode (the ones I've had anyway) that go to 15 seconds in some cases. I'd try that, closing the aperture down to f/16 or so, and see what you get. Just take a lot of 15 second exposures and keep the ones that lightning strikes happen during. At 15 seconds per shot you at least won't have hundreds of photos to look through, and with the iris stopped down you'll get decent photos during those exposure times.
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One, if you have a bulb mode, and especially if you have a cable release, just set it on bulb and about f/16 and hold the shutter open until lightning hits and then release the shutter. You can probably get away without the cable release too.
If you don't have bulb mode, you can just do long exposures, like 15 seconds, or the longest you can get, with the aperture stopped way down (the lightning will be plenty bright).
One I haven't tried yet, and only works with Canon Powershot cameras, is the open source scripting firmware with motion detect apparently is fast enough to just leave the camera sitting there and it'll snap a picture when the lightning strikes. I've only used it to take pics of birds at the feeder.
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I was using the "night snapshot" setting. With that setting, it appears that there is usually (at least for me anyway) at least a full 5 second delay between the time I press the shutter and the camera takes the picture. I even tried anticipating the lightning which is the picture I got above. I will have to try all the other settings in the future to see what happens.
Reply
The powershots don't have bulb mode, but they do have a manual mode (the ones I've had anyway) that go to 15 seconds in some cases. I'd try that, closing the aperture down to f/16 or so, and see what you get. Just take a lot of 15 second exposures and keep the ones that lightning strikes happen during. At 15 seconds per shot you at least won't have hundreds of photos to look through, and with the iris stopped down you'll get decent photos during those exposure times.
Reply
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