Wow..what a morning for weather! The flashes started around 5 AM with the distant rumblings, by 6 I was getting my camera as the storm was passing over head with instantaneous flashes and wall shaking crashes of thunder. As one who is a transplant from the west, the intense extreme weather that we experience here is such a treat! A month ago it was the boiling of the clouds in the sky. Some times it's the hail, the snow, the ice, the wind, the lightning and thunder: this morning it was the 2" in 50 minutes of rain that finally followed the strobe lights of the constant lightning and shaking thunder. I guess what I'm trying to say is ... IT WAS AMAZING!
I have a Cannon PowerShot A710 IS and am very pleased with the features and quality of the photos that it takes. This morning I was at the back doors clicking away. I was in Shutter Speed Mode trying to capture some of the lightning. The lightning was everywhere, but out of the 135 photos I took before filling up the rest of my 8 gig card, I only captured 3 photos with visible lightning bolts. I think I'll do better next time.
Initially I had the lens open for 15 seconds and was just trying to capture some - which I did. But the problem with that is that the whole sky is over exposed and you can't see the lightning, instead it just looks like a photo that was taken in the daylight instead of pitch darkness. So I started playing with the shutter speed (reducing it) and went to the programmable continuous photo mode and had it take 10 pictures one after another-hoping for a bolt to happen during the time the lens was open. And this happened too - but again it was over exposed. Eventually I was down to short exposure times and just taking 10 shots; one after another.
It was FUN. It also made me think of a few features in my camera that I'd like to improve for future lightning sessions. Next time I'll start in the continuous mode with short shutter speeds. And it'd be nice to not already have a memory card that was mostly full. None the less it was a fun time.I very much enjoy photography and it's one of the nice things about this blog that I enjoy too - taking daily photos. Cannon has a new PowerShot model out, the SX1 IS. It's a 20x optical lens and has a few other very nice features ... :-)
This is one of the few places old fashioned cameras come into play! In my photography class in Duncanville we would develop the film ourselves, and there was methods to expose different parts of the photos different amounts. I wish I still had access to a darkroom, it was lots of fun. I bet you'd enjoy it too.
ReplyDeleteSounds neat!
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