Wow, beautiful! I'm so keen to do some lightning photography but the storms always come from the wrong direction at my house, where I can't see them for the trees.
Yep, All I did was hold the shutter open then just release it after a strike.
I tried having a wider aperture but sky glow would make the clouds brown, to over come that I stopped the aperture down and lowered the ISO,, Lightning I realy Bright So I thought if you have fast setting you won't get any detail in the strike,
Mind you I think Luck has more to do with it that anything else,
Keep the uncropped version, the cropped version looks too restrictive. You used a good combination of aperture and exposure, but I would go to a lower ISO, less noise and gives you better use of aperture as you wont need to stop it down as much.
I'll give it a run through photoshop get rid of the noise and Print it out at a decent size.
At the moment there is a storm brewing but according to what I can see it will move north of here.
Careful if your planning on going out in them, some of that hail can punch holes through glass like a hot knife through butter. Good luck if get more storms though. If your interested have a liik around this site>> www.bsch.au.com put together by a friend of mine, Ben quinn.
let's hope we in brisbane get it ....thgough i don;t really have anywhere to take the photos from, i oculd do it out the front door, looking over Mt Coot-tha, but then you've got a muddle of powerlines and suburbia in the photo, but out the back could go alright....lets hope it swings south of here...
those are nice, I'll have to get some more practice.
Don't know if anyone saw anything on the news about a severe that hit the Gold Coast, I work right in the path of it, when I pulled up to the car park it was raining fairly heavy got out locked the car headed for shelter got there, then the hail came, lasted 10 minutes or more, from what I can see my car came off alright, not many noticeable dints.
I have to work tonight and tomorrow night though so no chance to get anymore shots for me.
....thgough i don;t really have anywhere to take the photos from, i oculd do it out the front door, looking over Mt Coot-tha, but then you've got a muddle of powerlines and suburbia in the photo, but out the back could go alright....lets hope it swings south of here... 
