Melbourne's New Years Day lightning storm

[Sab (Sebastian)]

Best storm in Melbourne for a long time. Countless lightning strikes (which are still going off in the background as I write this)

The first image is the unprocessed original
The second is a quick alteration to the contrast and gamma to enhance the lightning bolts.
The third is a stack of 4 x 30sec images in Startrails.

I used a Canon 500D
18mm
30 sec exposure
ISO 200

I hope you like

[DavidU (Dave)]

Nice shot's Sab. I was just outside watching it.

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Great captures!!

[byronpaul (Paul)]

Great shots .... what time of the night were they taken. You're only 11kms from me so we would have been in the same part of the storm.

I was outside watching as well .... looking in glee at my watertank overflow diverter pooring water all over my lawn as the tank was full to the brim .

For your 30sec exposures, did you simply do this so that you would capture some lightning bolts in that timeframe?

I didn't think to get the camera out, but will next time as you've inspired me to try this ..... just might have to wait a few years for another storm like that in the Melbourne

[Sab (Sebastian)]

Thanks All...

They were taken just after 9pm, facing East.

That's correct - I knew that using 30 second exposures would guarantee me some decent shots purely due to the amount of forks shooting across the sky.

[Sab (Sebastian)]

Just added a bit of blur in CS4 to remove some of the distortion in the clouds...

Thought I'd share the end result for anyone who's interested

[danielsun]

Nice captures there Sebastian.


Cheers Daniel.