Lightning On a Clear Night

Post by **weixing** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 11:29 pm

Hi,
Lightning in a clear night!!!

Without a scope to observe, I decided to took some "Earth Planetary Meteorology Astrophoto"... ha ha ha =P =P =P

Enjoy the light show and have a nice day.

Post by **weixing** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 11:30 pm

Light show Part 2...

Post by **weixing** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 11:31 pm

End of Light show and have a nice day.

Post by **Airconvent** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:09 am

wow nice....I like to look at lightning in the distance but the position of my corridor always faces away from the action. I remembered during my BMT days directly outside our main door there's always lightning towards Johor....very nice patterns.

wx, looks like even without a scope you are so enthusiatic ! :-)
so when is your scope arriving...

ariefm71 · Post by **ariefm71** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:39 am

fantastic! your terestrial pics are as impressive as your astro ones :-)

Post by **weixing** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:44 am

Hi,

fantastic! your terestrial pics are as impressive as your astro ones

Thanks, but my photo are not that impressive... it's the subject that is impressive...

Have a nice day.

ovc17m · Post by **ovc17m** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:57 am

Wow... I always love lightnings too... not too close to it.. Ha.

WX... ur scope not arrive yet? I did some obing tonight... Haha, nice weather!

chrisyeo · Post by **chrisyeo** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:16 pm

Hi Weixing,

Wow!

Very fortunate to get such a nice "seat" for the light show.

Did you use a long exposure to capture the lightning "by luck" or did you use your fast fingers?

Chris

Post by **weixing** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 2:06 pm

Hi,

Did you use a long exposure to capture the lightning "by luck" or did you use your fast fingers?

I tried using very long exposure, but the result is not good, because the light pollution will cause the building (and road) to super overexpose and the clouds will also be too bright due to light pollution... and the lightning won't look spectacular due to the too bright clouds.

"fast finger" won't work well because your finger are not that fast and you can only capture the near end of the lightning and usually miss the brightest part of the lightning, so it won't look nice.

So the key for me is to find a setting that have a exposure long enough to easily capture the lightning from start to end, but not causing the clouds to be too bright and not overexpose the buildings. Also, the sensitive msut be high enough, so that the lightning will look bright and spectacular.

What I do is while testing the correct exposure, I observe the lightning and try to find the pattern that the lightning will occur. In this case, I found out that a big lightning will occur around every 10s to 20s in between and last around 1s to 2s. So I'll start to take a few shot with 4s to 5s of exposure when near the predicted time... the result is around 8% successful rate.

Anyway, below is the setting for the above images for those who are interested in taking lightning too:
L1.jpg: 4s F5.0 at ISO400
L2.jpg: 5s F5.0 at ISO400
L3.jpg: 5s F10.0 at ISO400
L4.jpg: 5s F10.0 at ISO400
L5.jpg: 6s F10.0 at ISO400

Oops... type too much... hee hee :oops: :oops:

Have a nice day.

siahheng · Post by **siahheng** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:16 pm

Hi Weixing,

I have tried taking pictures of lightning. I notice they generally occur around the same area and like you said, there is a certain "timing" to the strikes.

I took this with a 6s exposure on ISO 100.

http://www.singastro.org/album_pic.php?pic_id=441

Cheers,

siahheng