shooting lightining?

[DragonDan]

So, with the Arizona monsoon winding down for the season, there was an unexpected storm this evening. Intending on shooting some sunset clouds, I thought it would be a good idea to climb a mountain for a scenic view. The lightning that developed made me stay way past dark (making the journey back down the mountain fun).
My question is, how could I have done a better job with this photo? f/22 at 15 seconds, ISO 800. I'm not sure about which white balance is 'best' for this type of work.
http://members.cox.net/dragondan108/lightning%20small.jpg

I could'a done a better job of framing the work, but this image is straight from the camera, just knocked down to 800x600 for web. Full image at THIS LINK (http://picasaweb.google.com/DragonDan108/Trial_Pictures#5244258840199169378)

[Bill Boehme]

I was in Phoenix on a business trip many years ago and got to see a really great lightning show while at a restaurant on a high vantage point that overlooked the city. Your image reminded me of that trip.

[Walczak Photo]

Well, I'm certainly no expert at shooting lightening but my initial thoughts here are that there's just not enough lightening in this wide angle scene to really be effective. For comparison's sake, if you have of done a portrait crop of this image with JUST the lightening (and where it struck the ground) I think it would have worked better. If you have of had lightening crackling across and lighting up the whole sky that would have been ideal here. As it is however, you basically have a night time shot of what looks to be some residential area (as there's no tall buildings or anything to indicate a large city) with this little splut of lightening way off to the ride hand side.

Obviously lightening is rather impossible to predict so I think you had the right idea by using a wide angle, but in the future I would be prepared to do some cropping unless your lucky enough to actually have the lightening fill the frame. Beyond that the only other thing I could really suggest is just to shoot -A LOT- of pictures...as with most experimental things of this nature you'll have a much better chance of success with 20 or 30 shots as apposed to just 2 or 3.

As far as the white balance goes...honestly, that's a tough one in my book because of the ambient lighting from the city. It's been my experience that citys now a days often have this rather ugly orange glow from street lights and such and especially when you are shooting under cloud cover as it were, that orange glow tends to get reflected a great deal and is all the more prominent. Personally I just shoot with auto white balance in these types of situations and correct during post processing but if you really wanted to get it exactly right at the camera, I think I would suggest using something like one of those white balance caps or an expo disk, do a long exposure so that orange comes thru and then use that for your custom white balance. You could also probably use a gray card as well but again you'd need to do a long exposure so you'd have to hold that card in front of the lens for a bit...using a cap or disk of some kind I think would be much easier.

I hope this helps!
Jim

[aram535]

I really like it. I love how you got the bulb going right for the center of the lights on the right. You could probably crop this a lot since the left side of the image isn't adding to it. Probably turn it into a portrait and zoom in a bit.

I think the only two things I would have tried were maybe going to f/11 and cutting down the shutter time by half. The lights are little too blown out. What I'm saying isn't exactly fair I know, you just set the time and hope to get the flash, but doing multiple shots with a faster speed more often "should" get you the same result.

[PhotosGuy]

I think you did a good piece of work getting this good an image on your first time out. Use whatever WB that you like with it.

Lightning photography. (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=133278)

[Jayson Prentice]

These type of city shots with the lightning are difficult, as you have to balance the ambient light coming from the city while also being able to capture the lightning at its' proper 'brightness'. One thing that will be of good interest is to get down to at least ISO 400, if not lower, I typically will shoot at 100 or 200, maybe 400 if I'm trying to get the lightning to pop better if it is distant. The next step would be with the aperture, typically I would shoot below f/11 and vary it dependent on how close/bright the lightning is.

I would expose to get the best shot of lightning, and then adjust the shutter speed so that you don't blow out the picture with the ambient city lights. Essentially have that shutter held down so you don't miss a shot once you figure out the exposure time. You might have to do 5 seconds in some cases, but when you get that one good shot it'll be worth it!!