Night Storm
Wallace has been displaying some great photos of thunderheads over the past couple of weeks, but his have all been taken during daylight. Tonight, we're being treated to a natural fireworks show off to the east, and I managed to assemble my camera and tripod and grab one halfway decent photo.
I used a shutter speed of 10 seconds for my Digital Rebel XT, with a digital film speed of ISO 100 and an aperture value of 5.0. The photo was taken about 90 minutes after sunset, but the top of the thunderhead was tall enough to still catch the tiniest bit of illumination. You can see the lightning near the bottom of the photo.
The remote control comes in very handy for these long exposures. I haven't done enough night photography to know what I'm doing, however; most of the series wasn't focused very well (autofocus is useless in this kind of setting). And, yes, I did do a little touch-up in Photoshop, in case you're wondering. But the result looks very much the way the storm looked in real life.
Now, if only we'd get some of these storms over us instead of out on the horizon...
Bryan, it's user error. I had the focusing ring going the wrong direction in a few photos because I couldn't remember which way infinity was, and it was too dark to make out the focus quality through the view finder. I just need more practice.
But, the clouds were moving, as well.
Posted by: Eric at May 29, 2006 10:44 PMThanks for catching that....I was out looking at it and trying to decide if it was worth the effort with my older, OK really old, but reliable digital.
Posted by: Wallace-Midland, Texas at May 30, 2006 08:43 AMI couldn't remember which way infinity was.
Heh. Taken out of context, this has a funny ring to it. ;-)
That's a beautiful photo! And we had the benefit of that thunderhead being over our heads at about 4:00 am this morning!
Posted by: Gwynne at May 30, 2006 08:49 AMWallace, so-called bulb exposures open up all kinds of creative possibilities, and I wish I knew more about how to do them well. My new camera has all the right tools for the job...I'm just not very well trained in how to use them.
Gwynne, we actually got another one over us around midnight, and ended up receiving about .2" of very badly needed rain, and at least that much thunder. ;-)
Posted by: Eric at May 30, 2006 08:55 AMEric,
The composure outweighs the blur. Very good shot!
Jordan
Posted by: Michael L. Jordan at May 31, 2006 05:07 PMAbout the publisher
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That's odd that they weren't focused very well, as focusing at infinity for 10 seconds should give you plenty of depth of field. The only other explanation that I could think of was that the clouds were moving so fast that they had motion blur over a 10 second exposure.
Posted by: bryan at May 29, 2006 10:30 PM