Lightning

I was rudely awakened about 4:30 this morning by a storm; hard rain drumming on the roof and constant lightning flashing in the windows with thunder nearly simultaneous.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...00/Weather.jpg

Aftre a while, the rain let up and so did the noise, but I could still see many many flashes. I got up and looked out the back of the house, and sure enough the rain had stopped, and the lightning was off in the distance to the west. It's not often you have a chance to shoot lightning without being in the rain or becoming a once-living lightning rod, so since I was up anyway, I got dressed and grabbed the camera and tripod.

I put the camera into manual focus, zoomed to that condo on the horizon, focused, and zoomed back. My 18-55 kit lens has a lousy focus ring, though. In manual, there is no resistance to movement, no friction or any other damping, and when I zoomed back it bumped a little bit. As a result, my whole session is just a tad OOF and useless for anything beyond web posting. So here they are.

Shooting info: 2 seconds at f:8, ISO 100. When I'd see any light start up I tripped the shutter. It was 99% throaways because usually nothing actually happened or it wasn't bright enough, or the lightning was up in the clouds and not itself visible. Nevertheless, I got a few nice ones:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-8...0/DSC_7895.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-b...0/DSC_7905.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B...0/DSC_7907.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...0/DSC_7922.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/DSC_7938.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...0/DSC_7980.jpg

I've been trying to capture lightning in similar fashion in recent weeks, so I know how tough it is. Looks like you've got more keepers than I've made. Really like #4, but were there two separate lightning events going on there? Trying to figure out the two different lighted areas in the frame.

Yes, two different zaps. #1 and #6 were also at least two events, I think.

Too bad about the focus! I did the same thing a few weeks ago in Taos. On the camera it looked like a great shot but once I downloaded it I realized it was OOF. I have found with lightning you just have to keep trying and the hit rate is very low, but occasionally I get a good shot on the first exposure.

Good shots, and sadly only almost great.

nice shots.....