How to Shoot Lightning
Some things in nature never cease to amaze us. Take lightning, for example. It’s not just amazing, but it gets so scary that our ancestors, in an attempt to appease the alarmingly loud and surprisingly bright thing, elected it as a God.
They didn’t have a camera…not even a film camera. Of course, then, Camera would have been known as the God who captured the God of Lightning; which brings us to the purpose of this article: photographing lightning with a digital camera without getting fried. Although there is no guarantee that your equipment won’t be hit by lightning, we’ll try to do our best to prevent that.
Open the shutter long enough, and you might catch two or more lightning bolts in a single photo!
Lightning Photography equipment needed
- A digital camera. You really need it, we’re talking from experience! You don’t need a DSLR, but be sure your point-and-shoot camera has some basic manual settings. We’ll list which settings are needed in a little bit.
- A tripod. Although you could do without it, it’s highly recommended. A monopod could be useful if you’re not photographing lightning at night. If you’re planning on shooting lightning during the day, then handheld would also be okay.
- An extra battery/set of batteries. You don’t want to run out of those in a middle of a beautiful thunderstorm!
- Storage. Be sure to have a memory card that can store at least several hundred shots, especially if your camera doesn’t have a bulb setting or if you’re planning on shooting lightning during the day in continuous (burst) mode.
- If you don’t want the camera’s lens to get wet, a UV filter is a great option. In fact, many purchase a UV filter just to protect their lenses.
- If you are planning on setting up your equipment in a place that doesn’t have a roof, then think about getting a waterproof case for your camera. An umbrella alone will not save it from moisture!
- Cable release. It’s a cable which lets the photographer release the shutter remotely, which eliminates camera shake caused by the finger pressing the shutter button. Don’t worry if you don’t have it or if it’s not available for your camera model. Unless your camera model has a bulb setting (which involves pressing on the shutter button) and you were planning on using it, it’s really not that necessary.
If you don’t want to go thunderstorm hunting, you can stay at home and try to capture the lightning strikes. If you live in a city, then this is the easiest scenario, especially if you have a balcony in a tall building. And it helps if no surrounding building is blocking the view. Be aware that, although a balcony is not as exposed as the roof of a building, you could get struck by lightning!
In case you’re outside, be sure there’s an enclosed building nearby you could seek shelter in. After all, we want to survive the photo session and brag about how we took those lightning pictures!
Photographing lightning during the day
Now let’s suppose it’s daytime, so we’ll prepare the camera accordingly:
- Manual Focus at infinity.
- If you are planning on shooting handheld, choose a wider aperture (smaller F-Stop number). This will allow you to set a faster shutter speed, eliminating camera shake.
- Choose the best shutter speed for the aperture you set earlier. Or just put your camera in Av Mode (Aperture Priority) and it will set the shutter speed automatically.
- Set your camera to continuous shooting mode (burst mode). This will prevent missing some really valuable lightning bolts! If the camera’s on a tripod, turn on the camera’s self-timer and set it to the maximum amount of shots possible, with the briefest shutter interval (time between shots).
- A high ISO is not needed, so ISO 100 is good.
- Point your camera in the right direction, and execute!
Photographing lightning at night
At night you will need different settings:
- Manual Focus at infinity.
- You don’t have to set the widest aperture, even at night, because setting the shutter speed at 15 seconds or even more sometimes (bulb setting) means very bright surroundings, especially in urban areas.
- The shutter speed and ISO are up to you. So experiment! But know that the lower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter is open, and the higher the chances of capturing multiple lightning bolts, several seconds apart, in one photo. As a side note, it is known that noise in the picture is more visible when photographing with low shutter speeds (several seconds or more).
- Turn on the camera’s self-timer and set it to the maximum amount of shots possible, with the briefest shutter interval. Continuous shooting mode is a good option at night only if you have a cable release, because if you keep the shutter button pressed all the time through several 15 second shots (and the time between those that the camera needs to process them), then you won’t only have extremely blurry pictures as a result, but an awfully numb index finger as well!
- Do I need to remind you to point the camera in the right direction?
If you have some lightning photography techniques to share with us, then please contact us.
You should take safety precautions whenever you’re planning on photographing lightning! Visit the Lightning Safety page on the noaa.gov website.