I can cross a Lightning Image off my Photography Bucket List

Lightning!

I had to stop on the way home and collect some gear for an upcoming camera club meeting, so I was late leaving work side of town. The sky was dark grey, very dark and thought I heard a roll of thunder as I got into the car. The lightning flash a few minutes later confirmed it, and the clouds rolled in covering the Port Hills in gloom, and there were astonishing flashes of lightning followed by echoing rolls of thunder all the way across town as I drove home, desperately hoping to get there before the rain.

Unfortunately the heavens opened a few minutes before home, but I grabbed my camera bag, hat and gloves (jacket and tripod already in the car) and headed out into the weather. Tried to get some shots from inside my car but the rain was too heavy, but by the time I fluffed around, it slackened off so I zoomed the car across the road and parked, getting out the tripod and trying my luck.

I set the camera up on manual mode, ISO 400, aperture of 7.1 and focussed on a tree in the foreground, with a shutter speed of 15 seconds. I thought I read that was an optimal shutterspeed for lightning.

The shot above is the sharpest shot I got on the night, I have a bigger lightning fork but its out of focus Still pretty stoked I got one image, Lightning is on my photography bucket list, so got to cross that one off! Oh the orange lights are cars going past while the shutter was open, this was taken handheld out the window of my car!