ZBrushCentral

Photographing Lightning.

Community
#1

I was out last night during a thunderstorm trying to photograph lightning. Somthing which I have never been all that successfull in doing. I managed to snap a few good shots. Here are some of them I thought I would share. Some of these images have been cropped to cut out alot of black sky.

[img]http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1029261718tgr.jpg[/img] [img]http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1029261829atu.jpg[/img] [img]http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1029261926gsb.jpg[/img]

If anyone is interesting in me emailing them the full resolutions, please ask away, I’d be more than happy. I have 70 odd photos I took last night that turned out successfull. but I felt these were the best of the lot. The last photo in particular I really really like. I feel it has a real artistic feel to it.
If anyone is interested in having a go for themselves, I found these settings to be very efficient.

Fstops 4.0
Shutter: 30"
ISO 200

S. Warner

#2

I love electrical storms… Very nice images.

This site sells prints of photo’s similar to yours: http://www.strikingimages.com/

These are the kind of pictures I can just stare at for a long time and look for details in the lightning, lighting and environment…

#3

Ya know…that third image would make a great desktop wallpaper. What is the original resolution of the images?

#4

Thanks! The original resolution is 1280 x 960

Normally I would have shot them at 2560 x 1920, however I knew I would end up with mostly black screens, so I lowered the resolution so I could keep snapping and not fill up the memory stick.

S. Warner.

#5

If you have no issue with it - I’d be interested in the 3rd image at full rez.

I like very clean, sparse images as my backgrounds - stuff that is not visually distracting and since I am also fascinated by lighning - that image would be perfect :slight_smile:

[email protected]

#6

It’s no problem at all. I just sent it to your email then. Thanks for taking an interest.

S. Warner.

#7

Very nice work Sirus. Before I even got past your original post, to read the others’ responses, I had already right clicked that last one and made it my wallpaper. PERFECT!

Thanks for sharing.

#8

you captured nature in it’s purest beauty…wow…thank you so much for sharing these…I love lightening… :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:

#9

Hi, could i pls have all 3 of those. im not sure which to use for wallpaper yet hehe. thanx

#10

These are beautiful Sirus! :+1:

#11

Artwork of the heavens! Very dazzling and great photographs!

#12

Those are beautiful. That last one would make a beautiful wallpaper. I’ve never had any luck taking night shots. We don’t get a lot of lightening here so practice is out ~s~

#13

Sirus, Absolutely beautiful images. Can I ask what camera you used. I’ve got an Olympus C-3000Z. The minimum shutter speed I can set is 16sec. I’ve read that the problem with using digital cameras for time lapse photograph is that the technology of current CCD’s make them very sensitive to noise at low light levels. So, the longer the shutter is open the grainier the picture gets. Kinda like bad jpeg compression. Your images certainly don’t seem to suffer from that, and that’s why I ask.

I take a lot of sunset pictures from my backyard, which faces west to the pacific. I live about twenty miles inland and with the smog, and soot from recent fires we’ve had some pretty incredible sunsets. Odd how something generally thought of as disgusting can generate a thing of beauty. I’ve noticed that as the sky gets darker my images get grainier. I’m no photography expert so, I’m assuming it’s pilot error. Seeing as how your images turned out so great, do you have any other words of wisdom? Other than the settings you listed above.

OH!, and I too would love to get the full res version of that last shot.

Thanks.

  • Bob
#14

The Camera I use is a Sony DSC-F707 5.2 Mega Pixels. You can buy it now days for around the 1000 dollar mark. I’ve found it to be a superb camera. As for tips to stop the photographs from comming out grainy when taken at night. Hmmm not much I can offer there, it generally differs from camera to camera. Olympus generally make a pretty good camera, however I have found that some models do suffer from a stray pixel here and there. If you upload some of your photographs I may be able to have a quick check over them and offer my thoughts.

On another note, I’m going to be uploading alot of my pictures to a website in the next week or so, so I will let you know when they are uploaded. I’m a little pressed for time at the moment, so I cant do as many things as I would of liked. thanks for taking an interest though.

S. Warner.

#15

There are various tools out there to get rid of the noise - everything from photoshop actions to stand alone programs.

I actually took the image and ran it through a program I use called “Neatimage” to get rid of the noise. It is easily the best product out there for noise removal. There is a free version and a paid version - essentially the same except for some speed and save enhancements in the paid version.
www.neatimage.com

#16

Sirus,

Here are few images taken from my backyard at dusk. You can see the graininess(sp?) in the first image. Even though its been down-sampled from 2048x1536 in Photoshop it is still appearant. The second image is the same, but filtered through NeatImage, thank you to Nonproductive for the link. The difference is notable.

The rest of the images are just some of my favorites.