The summer storms are starting to ramp up again...
I was staying somewhere which happened to have a decent view (although apparently it used to be better when there were less apartment blocks and trees).
Luckily I had my tripod handy so I was able to use interval mode to spam photos until I caught some lightning.
Storm time!
This one was very heavy and fast. We weren't even close to the centre but when it hit I couldn't see more than 50m away and we got some hail.
I couldn't remember how to use the automatic interval mode and didn't have the time to check, but luckily there was so much lightning it was hard to miss it just taking shots manually.
I closed the aperture down to f/16 so that I could get 3" of exposure with ISO 31 to get a better chance of catching lightning (I didn't have a remote handy so each shot was preceded by a 3" timer to let the vibrations dampen out).
I was really hoping I would catch some lightning in the city ahead of the storm but I wasn't that lucky.
The week after we got another storm and I got my city lightning. This was through quite a lot of rain - the outline of the buildings were quite faint. I really pushed the tone curve to get some contrast back in the city which gave it dystopian look in combination with the lightning.
This was a nice long 25" exposure.
And then the day after there wasn't a storm but lots of small lightning strikes repeating in the clouds. Also featuring the world's brightest cranes.
The lightning was staying in the exact same spot so I was able to just aim at the one spot and use interval mode to continuously take photos. As it was up in the clouds I had to use a shorter exposure of 5" with a slightly higher ISO of 320 to ensure that the lightning was white.
I could try stacking the interval series in some way to add up the lightning but then I run risk of artifacts from the tree blowing around so I haven't bothered.
If you want a high resolution version (usually up to 8k) of any of these shots for personal or commercial use, reach out to me and we can work something out.
How I did it
- Nikon D850 + Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 G2 + Tripod
- Shot in raw and edited with Darktable