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6-12-08
Finally, lightning I've been waiting for all season. Earlier in the day we went after a tornado warned cell which apparently dropped a tube in Taylor Ridge, but as usual, crapped out right before it got to us. But, it was putting out some pretty sweet cg strikes. No pictures on that. I did take some, but nothing worth posting up since it was just rain and a half-ass shelf. Later on in the night another cell came rolling through. This thing was VERY electric, lightning up the sky once every two seconds or so. I pulled down to the Port Byron boat docks and waited....and waited.....and waited. Nature was calling and it was also raining, so trying to hold it back and set up the window mount was pretty tricky. It was starting to drop some nice lightning a bit to my south, so I figured I'd just hand hold the camera and try to get an underexposed shot. Well, I got one, but it was very crooked. Still, I was very surprised on how clear it was, seeing as how it was a 1/15s shot. I'm sure the lightning flash had alot to do with that.
So, I run home, do what I had to do, and set back out. I tried taking a few shots, trying to get some anvil crawlers, but no dice. I probably waited another 1/2 hour for the light show to finally become visible to me. But, it would be worth the wait. I think I'm more into lightning now than actual chasing. I'm still trying to the "money" shot, but I never put myself in any position to do so. I need props! I noticed it was raining some distant cg's upriver, so why not.
Overexposed and far away. Not a good combination. The main action was still progressing toward me over the river though. I took about 25 pictures trying to get a single crawler, but I couldn't do it. Finally it was nice to me. I actually wasn't too optimistic at this point. I figured it was close enough to start seeing some cg's, but nothing. I didn't have the radar with me. I only saw what was on the return an hour ago. I was hoping it wasn't just all cloud to cloud stuff.
Ahh, relief. I was actually happy with THIS one, seeing as how I haven't had squat for real lightning shots this year.
It seemed to keep dropping them in one certain area, so I "zoomed" in to 40mm and locked the shutter up. I think I took 14 consecutive shots. Here are a few.
Backed out to 17mm. After this shot I noticed it was starting to blow out....bad. All of the above were taken at f/6.3, 25s, ISO 100. The bolts were still pretty far away, so I was sort of surprised the were blowing out this bad.
Still a little bright.
Getting a little repititious, I know. I couldn't figure out which ones I wanted on this page, so I just added all that I processed. I tend to get a little carried away sometimes.
Starting to get pretty close now. I'm not at f/8, 25s, ISO 100, and they are STILL a bit bright. I've never really had this problem. I usually shoot at f/5.6-6.3 and turn out just fine. These didn't seem any brighter than any lightning I've shot before. I don't get it.
Now at f/10.......yep, STILL blowing out. This was a head scratcher. I've only ONCE shot at f/10, and that was on bulb exposure. If I can remember right it was a two minute shot and was correctly exposed. Whatever it takes I guess.
Still blown out, with a shortened exposure of 20s. I still can't figure this one out.
About this time sirens started blaring. It took me by surprise. I got on the phone with Joel and found that it just went tornado warned, but wasn't too impressive looking on radar. So, I didn't pay much attention to it. I was just focusing on lightning.
This is when it starts to get interesting. Like that, the bolts all of a sudden started hitting very close (relatively speaking). I'm still at f/10 here, and they are still blowing out. I guess I need to set it to f/22 next outing. I don't know. I still liked the way they turned out though.
I'm still backed out to 17mm here and I still couldn't get the whole bolt in the frame. I wish I would have had it panned a bit more to the right here because there was another bigger and impressive bolt just out of frame. You can see part of it here.
Lightning sort of drifted off to the north and I could see rain coming in. I tried for a few more, but only got one up the river before the rains came.
I consider this a rather successful outing. Now I can't wait for my next opportunity.
I also wanted add a few more of my buddy Joel's pics here. Earlier in the day there was a brief, yet impressive storm that fired and dropped a VERY nice looking wall cloud. I was very impressed by his pics and thought I should put them up.
Here's looking at the very impressive updraft. These were all from the same storm.
Here's the wall cloud. Some pretty nice structure on that storm!
