Hi Michael, action caught just at the right time. The lightening is placed well in the frame filling the void on the right. Also agree on the pano suggestion as another option. Nice drama!
Thanks everyone. I went back to reprocess the image per the suggestions and I realized something, the image above isn't the image that I intended to post :) I like this image (and the suggestions) but if it's ok, rather than post the edit to the image above I would like to make the edit suggestions to the other image and post it. The camera was pointed to the same spot, the other image has better lightning strike.
Thoughts?
I think I'll wait and post the other one later. The character of the shot is different. There are things that I like about this one that I don't have in the other. I wish we could do side by side compares. I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on their preference...
Last edited by Michael Lloyd; 11-02-2010 at 08:54 AM.
Hi Michael, Normally that would be breaking the guidelines of 1 image per day for members but in this case go ahead and post the other image since you said it's very similar but with a stronger strike...(we all make mistakes)
Same setup / different strike. I did a pano crop. I didn't "exactly" push saturation. By that I mean I didn't use the saturation settings in ACR or CS5. I used a contrast mask / curves layer (normal) to boost contrast The net result was to boost contrast and saturation (I guess... I'm not a Photoshop whiz but I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express a lot lately)
Hi, Love the way the lightening is fanning out in the image. Alot stronger than the original post because the lightening is more dominant. I like it as presented but another option is to take a small bit off the left. Good one!
Unfortunately I wasn't in a location that had a clean foreground. The storm was very energetic. There was as much coming out of the bottom of the clouds as there was across them.
Way cool Michael! I like them both! If you do revisit the PP'ing....see if you can eek out any and all cloud details.....worth the effort IMO as these are very cool and that will just put them over the top!
I like it the way it is, but a couple more curves adjustments with masking would bring out whatever is left in the darkness. I would try anyway. I'm not suggesting it is necessary it is good as is.
Hi Michael, very cool shot indeed. Agree with Roman's suggestion to try and pull a little more detail out of the clouds. I wonder if Nik's Tonal Contrast might help take this a notch above very cool to awesome.
I like them all. Would love to see your fave as a stark B&W.
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BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Thank everyone. Thanks for suggesting that I try black and white Artie. I really like that one. For some reason I almost never reach for the black and white tool in the tool kit...
Gerald,
Thanks for asking. I don't own a lightning trigger. I'm not sure how well one would have worked with the storm that these shots came from. It was very energetic and there really wasn't a time when multiple lightning strokes weren't firing. I think my method resulted in fewer duds than if I had tried to use a trigger, in this case... but perhaps not always. That said, I'll outline what I do below.
Caveat- If you get struck by lightning you did not do what I do or you have incredibly bad luck, so don't blame me if you get toasted :cool: I'm sure that we've all heard about the errant lightning stroke that traveled 30 miles and struck the unsuspecting victim standing under clear blue skies. To my way of thinking the odds of that happening to me are minuscule. You'll have to determine your personal limits.
Location
I took the shots in this post from my yard. My house is on a hill therefore I have a pretty good view of the northern horizon (although cluttered at the horizon) and a really good view of the south and west horizon. My location in relation to the storm determined the type of shots that I will took. The storm in this post was coming at me from the north. The horizon line to the north of me is cluttered with power lines, the lights of a town about 6 miles away, the lights of billboards on interstate 10 about a mile a way, and trees along my fence line. Because of the clutter, any part of the image that depicted the horizon was cropped out. I only mention this because the last shot that I posted has three large cloud to ground strikes that are part of the main horizontal strike. If I had been in a position to cleanly capture the horizon and sky, the last image would be vastly improved in my opinion.
Setup
It helps to know something about the weather. If you only know that a cold front is coming and severe thunderstorms are in the forecast that will help. In the case of this post the forecast was for the cold front to pass late in the night with an 80% chance of thunderstorms. I had the local weather radar pulled up on my screen and set for auto update well before we were seeing flashes in the distance or there was any activity on the radar for that matter. Follow this LINK and drill down to your location by clicking on the map. You should eventually get to your forecast area and be able to select the radar display for your area. Here's a link to the San Fransisco area radar display. Click the loop button in the upper left corner then click the Auto Update bottom toward the bottom of the display once it loads.
Once the line of storms approached a predetermined point on the map I started setting up the tripod, camera, and lens. In this instance there is a town that is about 20 miles to my north and I use that as a reference for storms approaching from the general direction of north.
I don't think I should try to tackle the various forms of storms in detail in this post. There are two many to deal with and I'm not qualified to speak on them. This time I had great conditions. Next time there could be rain ahead of the front. Suffice it to say that the dynamics of storm creation are so widely varied that the 20 mile point that I used this time might not work the next time.
Gear
I put the camera on a tripod. I set the camera to Bulb mode and connected a cable release to the camera. I selected an ISO that would hopefully give me decent noise rejection (in this case ISO 400). I initially set the camera to f8 but some test shots on in cloud lightning were too dark so I compromised and set the aperture to f4. Obviously getting a decent photograph with these settings was dependent on how long I held the shutter open. More on that later. I pre-focused to infinity and aimed the camera and lens toward the most energetic area of the storm.
I used an 85mm lens for two reasons - (1) I don't have a 50mm lens and (2) 35mm was too wide for the location. There is too much foreground clutter from my north fence line and beyond. I try not to use a zoom lens for landscape shots so I guess there are three reasons. I compiled all of the shots that made the cut into a video (sort of, video isn't my thing so it's kind of clunky, its more like time lapse) and put it on my You-tube channel. There are 35mm shots mixed in with the 85mm shots in the video. The point is that you can see every shot that I took, less about 10 black frames, and that should give you an idea how well (or poorly if there is a better way) my "technique" works.
Triggering the camera
At last we get to the easy part. I used two methods during this outing. It's important to note that one of the methods doesn't work very well with a storm that isn't popping every second or less. Some storms have long duration cloud to ground strikes that aren't as predictable as the storm I shot the other night was. For those situations I use method 1.
Method 1: I always start with this method. It's not hard.
(1) I focus my attention and camera on the area of the storm that is most energetic,
(2) wait for lightning to strike in the area,
(3) when I see a strong flash in the area the camera is focused on I open the shutter
(4) when the flash is over I close the shutter.
If the flash duration is long enough and if my mind isn't wandering off to who knows where, the result is usually something like I posted here. However, if is a magnificently huge two letter word Sometimes I get black frames. Sometimes I get a well lit cloud with no streak. Quite often I get streaks of lightning. I get lightning strikes in my images often enough that I like using this method the most.
Method 2: I don't like shooting this way but in the case of the storm that I shot for this post it turned out to be the most efficient. As I said earlier, the storm that the images in this post came from was very energetic.
(1) I focus my attention and camera on the area of the storm that is most energetic,
(2) I observe the "nature" of the storm, looking for some indication that a big strike is going to happen. Often, when the storm is energetic, a little flicker will preclude a big main strike. Not always, but often enough that it's worth taking a little time to observe the storm.
(3) I take a few test shots to establish a minimum and maximum exposure time. 6 to 8 seconds seemed to work pretty well in the case of the images in this post.
(4) Once I think I have an idea for when a big strike is going to occur I open the shutter for an 8 count when there is no flash occurring in the area that the camera is pointed but I have seen what I think is a precursor to a flash. Then I wait for a 4 count and open the shutter again. I repeat this until I get tired of shooting or the lightning flashes come less frequently and I switch to method 1. If a flash occurs during the 4 count I trigger the camera when the flash occurs.
This method only yielded 10 dark frames out of 82 total images that I shot for this thread. As I have said, the storm was very energetic. However, what I determined to be a precursor didn't accurately predict when a flash would occur in the area. I have a lot of images where the cloud was illuminated but there was no streak of lightning visible. I'm going to say that the images that I got were less about predictability of the strike and more about the amount of energy in the storm.
Final thoughts
It may sound like my settings and my methods for shooting lightning are haphazard at best. In reality they are not. I have an idea for where the exposure is going to be before I shoot and it's usually pretty close. The reality is that the variability of the illumination from a lightning stroke is so wide that the best that you can hope for is somewhere close to the middle, shoot raw, and adjust it in ACR. An average exposure yields well exposed clouds and a blown out lightning stroke. In the case of the images posted here, the lightning stroke was not completely blown out. The center portion was blown out and both ends were exposed properly (luck counts).
ACR settings for _MLL1383.CR2
Exposure: 0.00
Recovery: 0
Fill Light: 0
Blacks: 0
Brightness: +31
Contrast: +40 (default for the camera)
Clarity: +25 (default for the camera)
Vibrance: +15 (default for the camera)
Saturation: +10 (default for the camera)
Obviously there was a little work done in CS5 but not much. For the initial processing pass there was a slight tweak done in shadows and highlights. I used a contrast mask / curves layer to give the image some pop, and I used a midtone contrast to fine tune it. The final two images were tweaked with Topaz (image one) and Nik ColorEfex Pro 3.0 for the B&W conversion. The Nik software does a better job on B&W conversion than I do so I use it. Either software's results can be achieved with the right steps in CS.
Last edited by Michael Lloyd; 11-06-2010 at 10:27 AM.
Hey Michael,
Thank you for the well detailed approaches that you use...
I do not have the same kind of history or regularity of Lightning in Northern California which rarely has any thunder storms.
I routinely check Yosemite and Lake Tahoe for such occurrences as the mountains have a higher percentage for opportunity and have drove to each location many times trying to get that awesome strike ...I have had little success so I'm drawn to these images and appreciate the knowledge to achieve one.
But I have not had the opportunity to use it, it seems that It would be more ideal in day time weather as it triggers the shutter in .1 milliseconds after a flash detection and might reduce multiple exposure attempts.
Thank you again for all of the insight...your You-Tube link did not get me to your page so please re-post the exact link sequence...
I would be interested to hear how you do with the lightning strike. I haven't finished reading the literature but if they have a shutter "hang time" setting then the multiple trigger issue isn't an issue since the shutter would be held open for the duration set by the device. If not then perhaps they've covered it another way.
Storm's Coming
Sometimes I get black frames. Sometimes I get a well lit cloud with no streak. Quite often I get streaks of lightning. I get lightning strikes in my images often enough that I like using this method the most.
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