ZAP!
(in which we hope for lightning)
I hope we get the perfect storm. Which, for our trip, means that there’s a distant electrical storm that does an amazing light show without dumping buckets of water on us, or setting anything on fire.
TECH IS WONDERFUL
I’m buying a wonderful widget called the Lightning Bug, from MK Controls, that senses the infrared pulse that precedes a lightning strike by mere nanoseconds. Even from far away!
And here’s the cool thing: with a splitter, I can trigger multiple cameras at the same time. If you bring a camera trigger cable with a mini-phone plug on one end (the other being the proprietary camera interface) and we get lucky with a picturesque storm, we can all tie into the one trigger.
Look here for MK Controls cables, http://www.mkcontrols.com/order/ , or go to B&H, Amazon, ProPhoto Supply, etc.
BUT WAIT CAN’T WE GO OLD SCHOOL?
Oh sure. I captured that image above old school: I guessed at an exposure with a 30-second exposure and kept triggering the shutter open, hoping that I got a strike. I got 2! Out of a lot.
Here’s the thing —it’s easy to overexpose an image with the shutter held open. The longer it’s open, the better the chance of capturing a bolt, but the longer it’s open, the more exposure the sky/clouds are getting, and at a certain point, the ambient can = the lightning.
And you definitely cannot react fast enough—by the time you see the strike, it’s over. The lag between the strike, your eyes registering it, your brain telling you what it was your eyes saw, your brain telling your finger to push the button, your muscles reacting and pushing the button, the button sending an electrical pulse telling the shutter mechanism to expose the sensor, and the image being recorded is very, very, LONG in lightning measures of time.
With a trigger, you can set the exposure to capture ambient light correctly and not overexpose the sky, and you can set the drive mode to HIGH and capture a burst of images.
AT INFINITY. NOT BEYOND.
One last tidbit that works for this stuff, or star photos, or just long exposures at night. Know where infinity focus is on your lens. If you’ve ever tried to focus by eye at a distant landscape feature in the dark, because you are hoping for a lightning strike, you know the frustration of trying to figure it out.
Yes, there’s some kind of ∞ symbol on the lens (or in the viewfinder) but that’s not exactly a mark like this | that you can precisely align to. Now part of that is cost: there’s a difference between a $40,000 cinematography lens and a $400 stills lens. Those more expensive lenses are just built better with more exact tolerances. There’s also the issue of environmental shifts — that same lens in the cold and in the heat is going to have just enough difference in contraction/expansion to move things a tiny bit, and at ∞ that tiny bit means everything.
Being a hair off by manually focusing and guessing at where to put the focus can result in soft images. During the day, you can focus at a distant point using the AF system, and then use a small piece of artist’s tape + pen to mark the lens.
If you’re on a mirrorless camera, or if you can live focus on the LED screen, since you are viewing an actual image from the sensor, you can focus on a bright star and do it by eye.
In any case, figuring out where your infinity focus actually is in the daylight, before you need it, is the way to go. If you’re extreme, and you have the right kind of lens, you can even tape the focus in position during the day.
COMING SOON: NEUTRAL AND DENSE
I started a lengthy post about ND filters1 but got the email from Dave at MK Controls and wanted to give you guys a chance to get a trigger cable. I can’t guarantee the lightning but I can guarantee if it happens we’ll be ready!
cheers
-andy
I’m endorsing benrofilters.com, who gave me a VIP price, but has not paid me to talk about their gear. Their glass is solid and affordable! If they sucked I would let you know—I don’t advocate for crappy gear.