First attempt at lightning

[expat]

I had to drive through this to get to work last night. It was a lot more fun to view it from a far than be under it .
This is my first attempt at lightning.

Matt

West-ish







An turning around 180 degrees to face East-ish

[Omag 2.0]

Great colours in the sky! Massive cloudfront!

As far as bolts themselves, you'll need to be able to focus at infinity to catch one. I used to try this too with my Panasonic FZ5, but I never got any decent results.

With my Canon 400D, I can manually focus the lens at infinity and use a long exposure to catch the bolts. Works better that way, but you still need a good degree of luck to get a good composition.

[Willit Run]

Nice work!!

I tried this on Sunday when we has to nasty storms rumble through with no luck.  When I was set up pointed one way the lightning bolts would stike on either side but, not in the lens view and of course when I pointed the camera in a different direction a bolt would flash right where I had the camera pointed!!

[61_OTU]

It is possible to manually focus the fuji (my s5600 at least) but you will need a tripod and I think that you will only get a max exposure of 15sec.....not sure if your Fuji would give you any longer Matt

Nice shots though  ;)

Steve

[expat]

It is possible to manually focus the fuji (my s5600 at least) but you will need a tripod and I think that you will only get a max exposure of 15sec.....not sure if your Fuji would give you any longer Matt

Nice shots though  ;)

Steve

My Fuji has turned into a Nikon D60 8-).
The problem with the D60 is when using manual focus, the end stop is not infinity. You have to crack it back a fraction and when you cannot see what you are focusing on, it becomes a guessing game. I need to do some testing in manual focus and then put a small mark in the focus ring to tell me when infinity is actually in focus.

Matt

[Omag 2.0]

Congrats on the nice camera! Kitlense? Those are a female dog to focus manualy... A nice fast sigma, Tamron or Nikon standard zoom often offers a wider focusring, making things easier...

[61_OTU]

Apologies Matt for dissing your new Nikon, but it's not my fault that you can't spell Canon  ::)

A tripod will always be your best friend in low light, but it does become a bit of a guessing game when it comes to focus. Best bet is to find the furthest thing on the horizon, focus on that and then drop it into manual focus to stop it hunting. Give it a go and if it's off then manually adjust it...trial and error.......

So.....Nikon.....discuss  ;)