P#6 Q3: A Simple Tip to Improve Your Photographs of Lightning

An open shutter captures lightning

Jim Zuckerman: Yeah, I know. The way to do it is at night. I have actually tried photographing lightning in the daytime before, and I've never gotten anything good. Like you say, it's instantaneous, and you have to be pointing your camera at the right portion of the sky for that moment. It's really, really hard.

The best way to do it is shoot at night. You need a tripod, and you point the camera at the area of the sky that is getting most of the activity.

The way I do it is I open the shutter for 30 seconds. If no lightning happens, I close the shutter and open it again.

With digital, this doesn't cost any money so it's very easy to do. I set the lens at f8 and I wait.

Obviously you have to focus manually. This is not an autofocus situation. By the way, it's the same with fireworks. I would focus manually. Most of the fireworks are going to be at infinity, but they'll all be in the same portion of the sky so you want to use a manual focus because autofocus won't be able to lock on.

With lightning, use f8, a tripod, manual focus, and you just wait.

The issue really is which lens to use because if you use a wide angle, you'll get a large portion of the sky, and you'll definitely get the lightning in your picture. The problem though is the lightning will be too small and too insignificant. That's not really want you want.

You want the lightning to fill a lot of the frame so it's powerful. That needs a telephoto.

The problem of course is that the telephoto has a narrow angle of view. So you basically play a guessing game. You have to guess where the next lightning burst is going to happen.

Most storms, the lightning occurs generally in the same parts of the sky over and over again, maybe a little more to the left, little more the to right. You basically just have to guess.

I typically use a focal length of anywhere between 100mm and 200mm. That's usually good enough.

If the lightning happens to be right above your head and it's filling a huge portion of the sky -- it's a rare situation, but it can happen. It's happened to me -- in that case, I do use a wide angle. That's only because the lightning bolts are so huge.

But usually the lightning is a little further away, and the bolts are smaller because of the distance. They appear to be smaller.

The 100mm to 200mm lens works well. Again, you want a low ISO, 100 if you don't want that digital noise. The truth is, you don't need a higher ISO. You just don't. That's the formula.

Audri Lanford: Great.

You know, that made me realize that we didn't really talk about what kind of lens to use for the fireworks either.

Jim Zuckerman: It depends upon how far they are away, but I use 50mm lens, and it was perfect. I found that telephoto was too tight, and a wide angle made them too small in the sky.

At least when I photographed them in Nashville -- which I think they were at a typical distance when you go to a fireworks display -- the 50mm worked out really well for me.

To summarize

To take great photographs of lightning, shoot at night, use a tripod, and don't autofocus. Use a 100mm to 200mm lens unless the lightning is directly overhead. Leave the shutter open for 30 seconds and point at the part of the sky with the most lightning activity.