There were a couple of interesting comments from Reddit users on yesterday’s post on lightning photography that didn’t make it into the article comments. In case my article was a bit confusing, here are their methods on how to take great lightning shots.

From Reddit user dneuman:

You need to expose for the background. With long exposures, your camera meter may not tell you how long to keep the shutter open to do that. Here is how to figure this out:

If you don’t have a bulb or manual shutter setting, set the camera to shutter priority, with the shutter at maximum exposure, and adjust aperture (and ISO if digital) to get the background exposure right. Then keep taking shots and hope for the best.

If you do have a bulb or manual shutter setting, set the aperture to its lowest f-stop (widest setting) (and ISO to highest value if digital), and find the shutter value that exposes the backround properly. To set up for lightning: If you are digital, cut the ISO number in half and double the shutter speed (in your head), repeating until you get your lowest ISO value. Now (for digital and film) do the same with the aperture, moving it up a stop while doubling the shutter speed in your head, and repeating. If you reach a shutter speed of around 20-30 seconds you can stop. With your camera shutter set to manual or bulb, take a series of 20 second (or whatever value you reached) photos. Use a watch for best consistency. Do the exposure process several times if you are shooting in variable light (moving clouds, twilight).

I’ve never had a digital camera that had a shutter speed longer than 2 seconds, so I’ve always set to longest shutter value and a large memory card and just kept shooting. With my film camera I had much more success using very long exposures. For night scenes I could underexpose the background from what the meter read by a stop, since the point lights would still expose nicely.

Reddit user Ichae takes a different approach entirely, using the video mode on his digital camera to give himself a better chance at capturing the lightning:

Another good technique (if your aren’t worried about printing your pics) is to take a high-res movie and capture the still frames that have lightning in them. This works better especially for daytime lightning when you would blow out the whole scene with a long exposure. On my digicam I’ve got a 1024×768 video mode, and with a 4GB SD card I can take enough video to get several strikes even if the lightning is erratic.

On another note, some digicams automatically take a black frame and subtract it off for noise reduction if you use a shutter speed over a couple seconds; this is rather annoying for capturing lightning because usually there will be no lightning for the 30 seconds you are capturing, and then a spectacular show while the black frame is being taken…

Both are interesting ideas. DNeuman presents a very regimented approach that would probably work best for the more advanced photographer. Ichae’s video method probably should only be used if you just aren’t having any luck at all capturing lightning with a still frame.

Any other ideas? Let me know in the comments.

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