Lightning Boltz

[Mital Patel]

Posting after long time. Thought to share my experience of shooting lighting .. did gave a try in 2007 and after 3 years in June 2010 i got succeeded captured many boltz in one.

This image is made from my building terrace.

22/06/2010, 8:32pm
Nikon D300s, Nikkor 12x24mm at 15mm
f/11, 301sec. ISO 100

More image can be seen here
http://kevincreation.posterous.com/monsoon-magic-experimental

[Myer Bornstein]

I agree that lightning is very hard to capture. I like your picture. However, I would crop most of the right side and concentrate on the larger bolts of lightning rather than multiple small bolts that are on the right side of the frame

[Mital Patel]

myer thanks for your suggestion.. yes its true to concentrate on bigger which i did in another long expo. this was specially to grab max boltz in one

[Dave Mills]

Hi Mital, A spectacular lightening display! Glad you were a good ways away.
A few things. If this were mine I would crop the top down to just below the top horizontal bolt. Since most of the sky up in that area has little interest it will tighten the view below. The image lends itself to a pano.
I might have had a bit more on the bottom since it's cut pretty close. All in all a good capture of an elusive subject....

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Lovely capture Mital. I like the image as you've presented (without any cropping).
Could you kindly share some details on how you made this image ?

[Mital Patel]

kaushik i just did 3 hours session with this boltz moving from NE to N side along with the wings and clouds. initially they were far very far and smaller and gave me nice good time to learn setting and study on how its giving from small boltz to very long and high.

The pattern later was very unique and clear and i made few images as what expected not 100% (as it cant be) but i found that lighting boltz if they are running for longer you need to listen them and study cuz rest of the game is all depend upon the long expo like i did few with 5 minutes and few 10minutes and more.

U need to use the cable release which i used on bulb mode with keeping its release lock on as long as i wanted...

[Robert Amoruso]

I would suggest tighter pano crop then Dave to just above the top of the left side vertical bolts.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Mital,
I think you did very well capturing the multiple bolts! I like Dave's suggestion of a crop off the top.....top further accentuate the bolts. In this case too....I agree that more of a base would help......even if it is the city! Nicely handled technically and it must have been quite the site!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Thank you Mital for the inputs.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Mital, I like this a lot. That color is quite special.