Tuesday, September 22, 2009

TX Thunder Storms are AMAZING!!

Last night a storm came through that was truly amazing to watch .. which I was fortunate to be able to do. The lightning acted like hands and fingers as it would 'walk' across the sky in multiple fingers at one time. Even my youngest enjoyed watching it .. almost as long as I did.

I took almost 400 photos last night trying to catch some of the amazing things that I was witnessing with my eyes. Out of those I have about 6 photos with lightning captured. My son and I talked about how we could improve out odds of capturing lightning and how that too would be fun.

I have an inexpensive camera as cameras go - a Cannon powershot model, but it takes good pictures; in part due to the 6x optical zoom. I put it on the shutter speed mode and set it to take 10 pictures back to back. The shutter was open for 1 second last night and that seemed to be good - so I stuck with it. I put the manual focus on and set it to infinity and then put the camera on the tripod, pointed it in a hopeful direction and then press the button. When it's done I press the button again. Keep repeating the last step until done.

Here's a sample of the photos. If you missed the impressive show - I hope this wets your whistle to check out the next storm that rolls through.  :-)

(My oldest son went out on the porch and caught some lightning with his phone - with out taking 400 shots.)






4 comments:

  1. those are some awesome pictures!!! I didn't have my camera with me while the lightning was going so I missed the chance. I especially like the first one.

    -Benjamin H-

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  2. I've started to take my camera with me more often as I was having those "O man, I wish I had my camera" moments to often. Last night I had to go back home for it and my tripod - I'm sure glad I did.

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  3. Those pictures are really neat. It's interesting that they aren't quite like traditional lightning (or at least now how I think of it) with just one jagged streak...these have lots of them. Very intense. I have to make a blog for one of my classes at school, called an "idea blog." Every post has to have an "idea"...so I think it will be a bit cheesy, but if you want to check it out it's at http://d-hinton.blogspot.com/

    (all the empty blogs are me reserving them for later...for when I have ideas =p I'm being sneaky because I have to have a certain amount of posts but I don't have any ideas yet and I don't want them all to have the same date and time and give me away!)

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  4. Neat .. I left a couple comments.

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