I've been at Crater Lake in Oregon for the last few days. there was a wonderful lightning/thunder storm Sat night (which unfortunately started many wildfires)
A photographer I was talking to about how tough it can be to catch a good lightning strike said he had heard there was a new sensor available that anticipated lightning strikes and released a camera shutter timed to catch them.
Lightning Triggers work well for daytime lightning, but you can always just use a slow shutter speed to capture bolts in the evening.
The Lightning Trigger detects the first strike and sets the shutter off in anticipation of a follow up strike (which may or may not happen).
Have hear of the sensor Preston mentioned, but never had enough lightning opportunities to justify spending that kind of dough.
Along the same lines of what John mentioned (never done it myself for this purpose), you can use an ND Filter to increase your exposure time - although depending upon the lighting and lightning this may or may not get you the exposure times needed to capture some strikes.
Might not be terribly hard to build one... The next time there's a lightning storm tune an AM radio to where there's no station audible. You'll hear the radio frequency blast from the lightning strikes. Shouldn't be too difficult to turn that audio into a trigger for the cable shutter release. It would take some time to tweak it, but it sounds like a fun experiment!!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on August 6, 2009 at 5:59 PM
The next time there's a lightning storm tune an AM radio to where there's no station audible.
Brilliant! And when the storm gets close you can often time it between strikes. We had a storm move through once at 3am that had bolts hitting about every 70 seconds, so I waited about 45 seconds then opened the shutter, and sure enough a bolt lit up the sky about 15 seconds later. This one's back from '98, good ol' Velvia and scanned to a floppy back then!
That's very manual and risky as far as missing a shot, but the AM radio trick can certainly give you advanced knowledge that it's coming.
Discussion
5 repliesA photographer I was talking to about how tough it can be to catch a good lightning strike said he had heard there was a new sensor available that anticipated lightning strikes and released a camera shutter timed to catch them.
anyone have any info on this? sounds very cool..
thanks -
sandy r
Take a look here: http://www.lightningtrigger.com/
The Lightning Trigger -- $329.00
Comes with a carrying case, 9V battery and a 2 Year Guarantee.
You'll have to check to see if they have one that's compatible with your camera.
-Preston
The Lightning Trigger detects the first strike and sets the shutter off in anticipation of a follow up strike (which may or may not happen).
Along the same lines of what John mentioned (never done it myself for this purpose), you can use an ND Filter to increase your exposure time - although depending upon the lighting and lightning this may or may not get you the exposure times needed to capture some strikes.
Brilliant! And when the storm gets close you can often time it between strikes. We had a storm move through once at 3am that had bolts hitting about every 70 seconds, so I waited about 45 seconds then opened the shutter, and sure enough a bolt lit up the sky about 15 seconds later. This one's back from '98, good ol' Velvia and scanned to a floppy back then!
That's very manual and risky as far as missing a shot, but the AM radio trick can certainly give you advanced knowledge that it's coming.