Wow!
Did you see the SMH picture gallery today? There’s an amazing shot of lightning hitting the harbour bridge.

Saw those, Suki. The Harbour Bridge strike was astounding!

I submitted these shots and a few more to SMH, but they weren’t published.

I’m still learning this camera, but I’m fairly happy with these shots. These are 8 second exposures at f8 with an equivalent film speed of ISO200. Had to shoot a LOT of frames before getting a few bolts with the shutter open!

Great pix, weez! I, too, got up after trying to go to sleep in vain (the lightning was so bright in my room it was like someone kept popping camera flashbulbs in my face) and took some photos. Alas, I just couldn’t “catch” a lightning streak across the sky, my camera is bloody hopeless (it takes the photo about 2 seconds after you press the shutter). But I did take a great pic over a year ago of the Harbour Bridge and Luna Park. Really random. I can email it to you if you like. 🙂

Thanks for the compliment, C 🙂

Sure, email away.

The trick to photographing lightning is to set a loooonnng exposure time (5-8 sec), a narrow aperture (f8) and select a relatively slow ‘film speed’ in digital cameras or use a rather slow speed film like ISO200.

If your exposure is too long, aperture too wide or film too fast, you get a lot of light grey night sky background as several smaller lightning flashes go off out of frame or as city light pollution exposes what should be a dark area of the image.

Just do your settings, put the cam on a tripod and keep shooting your long exposure frames until you are lucky enough to get a bolt or two with the shutter open.

Long exposure times exaggerate the severity of a storm to a degree as numerous bolts can strike during the long exposure time. In the resulting exposure, it looks like all those bolts are happening at once.

Thanks for the tips, I shall check them out. Do you do photography, like a serious hobby or something, btw? You seem to know your stuff.

I would have kept taking photos and hoped for the best the other night, but the batteries died. Grrr.

awesome pictures!

C said:

Do you do photography, like a serious hobby or something, btw?

It’s a hobby only in that learning certain photographic techniques follows my interest in getting a particular photo. I am not as interested in photography in and of itself. I pick stuff up as I learn how to get the shots I want. I know enough about the basics of photography to alter settings to get a particular effect, but I don’t know every possible photographic technique.

Thanks, dj. 🙂