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The last thing I thought I'd see this day when I woke were any local convective photo ops. I saw the bubbling, high based, low topped towers in the afternoon and figured they would vanish before sunset. They didn't. They surprisingly became severe warned. As it got closer to sunset I followed this one east into Iowa a few miles. All I hoped for was a rainbow, and maybe some daylight CGs if I could capture them...hell, if it would produce any! Lets just say this thing was not a big cloud to ground lightning producer.
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If it's sort of close to sunset, you can stop down to F16 or so and maybe be lucky and get a 2 second exposure with that. That would be plenty if there's some good lightning activity. If not, like this time, well it's going to take you a ton of back to back shots to get one. This one likely took 50 or more consecutive 2 second shots. Hell, I was probably still stuck with 1.5 second shutters on this one. It's a little bit of a pain in the butt. Ok, no, it's a big pain in the butt. You have to go back and delete them so you can keep doing it. They are just as big of a pain to delete one by one as they were to snap one by one. And sure enough, while you are doing that the activity picks up. If I had much extra cash I'd buy a lightning trigger. That attaches to the camera, senses the first sign of a flash and snaps the shutter for you, getting most bolts. But again, with a more electrical storm, it wouldn't be tough to do this without one of those. Rain wasn't helping either. Had to put the tripod on my lap in the car and shoot out the window that way.
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As I saw the rainbow start to show itself I thought, ok, now I really need a nice CG. So click click click click click click I go, with more short duration shutters hoping to catch a bolt. You stop the lens down too much(allowing you more shutter time for the scene) and then it screws over the dimmer lighting bolts. So you are really limited on daylight lightning photography.
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I'm using my ultra wide Canon 10-22 on these I think. I was happy to get even that bolt with the rainbow.
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I'd prefer a big forking CG with it, but I'll take this cloud to cloud one. To give some idea of how many shots it takes to get these like this, I snapped over 500 photos in 1 hour. That is actually 500 snaps and probably around 400 image deletes, since the 2 gig card won't hold that many. That is before the twilight/moon ones. Dealing with rain on the lens at times too. That is averaging 15 pictures or images deleted per minute for 1 hour straight. So in other words doing one or the other every 4 seconds for one hour constantly. If your shutters are mostly about 2 seconds of that 4, well, it's a busy pain in the butt to do daylight lightning.
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Getting a little easier now as the light fades and my shutter lengthens accordingly. Still not many CGs though.
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I'd been sitting in my south facing car this whole time. I finally get out and see the nice backsheared anvil to my north, with cloud to cloud bolts popping away, buried in the precip.
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Facing back south here. It looked pretty cool down that way. The OPPD nuclear power plant is down there, only a few miles. It's red lights give off this red color to the rain shafts falling nearby. Toss in the partial moon above, the twilight light on the cloud tops and the CG or two, and you have yourself a great photo op.
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These were about 30 second exposures now, which really brightens up the red lighting on the rain....obviously....and everything else for that matter.
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Stars starting to come out now, as my rain and lightning slide east.
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I was probably ISO'd up to 400 or 800 on this one.
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Stupid jet! This location is really nice. Not a ton of people live along this gravel road and it's really flat. Problem is the dang jets landing and taking off out of Omaha.
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Longer exposure, ISO'd up to 800 too...I think. Moonlight casting the camera and my shadows. The hardest part about standing still for a minute or so....mosquitoes.
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This was probably a three minute exposure. From time to time I kept noticing an odd green tint to the clouds. I don't know if this was from a green light on the ground, like can be seen above, or what. Hard to see it in any of these, but it's a little noticeable on the far left horizon and in a tiny spot above and left of the green light. Don't think we had any very faint auroras, but a high ISO, longer exposure like above sure would pick that up if it there was. I see on spaceweather there was a KP index of 2 the last 24 hours. Hmmmm. That faint green above the northern horizon in the above just makes me wonder I guess. Visually at the time, it was only apparent JUST enough to notice something looked different there. Not a bad evening for only having to drive 6 miles or so to get here.
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