Tokyo Storm
August 16th, 2005
I caught some flashes of bright light out my window earlier tonight, and so took the camera outside to see if I could catch some more lightning. Most of the time, the lightning was above the clouds, giving this effect:
It may look like daylight behind those clouds, but those are lightning strikes. In the next shot, you can also see the fall of rain, more usually captured in large, flat plains (like the Kanto here, of course–but we don’t see it as often here). Again, the light background is lightning strikes behind the cloud cover:
But several strikes came in under the cloud cover:
And:
I always enjoy your lightning photos. I tried taking some photos last night as well, but they didnt turn out as well as yours.
So how do you take these photos? do you take videos of it and use quicktime to play it back slowly and save the image as a photo? or do you take an actual photo of it at a certain timing? I would love to be able to take these types of photos myself! Thanks!
Just a standard 15-second time exposure with the camera on a tripod. After the 15-second exposure, it takes another 15 seconds for the camera to process the data, and then I immediately take another photo. I can catch half the action that way, though it is frustrating when, several times in a row, nothing happens during the exposure and a great show starts up while the camera is processing.
Thank you for your response.
I am reading up on different exposure times and it is so interesting! This is exciting, I’m going to take a look at my camera tonight and see if it has this.
Thank you! Looking forward to the next storm.
What kind of camera do you have? Most digital cameras have the ability to take long exposures, especially if they have manual modes. My Canon has “AV” (manual aperture mode), “TV” (manual exposure mode), and fully manual/fully automatic modes.
The 15-second exposure is pretty good for setting up night shots.
thank you for sharing your photos with the world… my 2 1/2 yr. old and I were looking up woodpeckers and came across your pix… beautiful!!! The little one is too afraid to look at lightning strikes out of our window… thanks for giving me the opportunity to show her what they look like without all of the fear of thunder!