Photograph Lightning From an Airliner

Hello All,

I have been working on a technique for photographing lightning at night from an airliner. I get a lot of practice -- I'm a pilot. Anyhow, I think I finally figured out a method that works and you should be able to pull this off from a window seat in the back of the plane.

The key is to understand that lightning acts like a strobe. It lasts for a split second and then it's done. In fact, it almost doesn't matter how long your shutter is open. The lightning will be fast enough to stop the action. It's like a giant second curtain flash.

So how exactly do you capture an image like this? Believe it or not this photo was taken with a 30 second shutter speed. Here's the settings f6.3 at 30 seconds and ISO 800. I set the focus to manual and set the focus distance to infinity (the sideways 8 on the focus scale). I then pointed my camera towards the weather and held it very steady while the shutter was open.

In the dead of night at high altitude there isn't much ambient light. The light source for this picture is 99% from the lightning. This means you need to use the same techniques as you'd use when you're shooting with flash/strobe. The brightness of the lightning in the finished photo depends on aperture and ISO. You have to chose between limited depth of field and image noise. If you happen to be flying really close to the bad weather you can use a lower ISO and smaller aperture. If the lightning is far away you have to open the aperture and up the ISO. I can't give you any hard guidelines, but a good starting point is ISO 800, f/5.6, and shutter open 30 seconds.

Why the long shutter speed? This gives you more chances to catch a bolt. Otherwise you're just guessing when lightning will strike and you end up with 200 pics of inky black nothing on your CF card.

So if 30 seconds is good, why not try going longer? Why not put the camera in bulb mode and leave the shutter open till something awesome happens. That's how I got the above shot. This one was taken at ISO 400 and f6.3. I held down the shutter button till a really big bolt flashed. Pretty cool. You can see some motion blur in this picture, but I think it makes the picture look that much cooler.

As far as getting to see lightning at night from an airliner... It's actually very common in the summer. If you live in the US and fly from the east coast to the west coast on a summer evening I can almost guarantee you'll see some lightning while you cross the great plains. You have to keep you're window shade up and don't fall asleep or you'll miss it. the best place to see lightning is in the southeast, along the gulf coast, and over Texas. If your flight takes you in these areas, be sure to have your camera accessible.

And for you nervous flyers... don't worry about thunderstorms. Modern aircraft have awesome radar and we navigate around the weather very easily these days. If you see lightning out the window don't worry. Your pilots are making sure to stay out of the rough stuff and will keep you safe. The size of the sky can be deceiving. The menacing weather you're seeing out your side window is probably 30 miles away.

If you like this sort of thing stop by my blog. I post photos from my aerial adventures pretty regularly.

:p


OP - great tutorial and great photos. I'm having a look at your blog for more