Lighting @ Coombell 01/12/05

Here's a few shots from yesterday.

Canon Powershot A84, I continually try and tweak the settings
when trying to nab lightening shots so I couldn't tell you settings
except ISO 50

The last image is a stack of 20 frames grabbed from 3m 20s worth
of avi (from my Canon A85 in movie mode) over about a 5 minute
period. All images have been shrunk or compressed to up load here.

regards,CS ...if not let it storm

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Looks wild. I feel electrocuted.

It's strange but Mackay has missed ALL the storms. We had only 25mm of rain in November. Most of the grass here is brown again.

[davidpretorius]

these are very good, i still love that "wrath of god".

#4 is my favourite!, but not my all time favourite

dave P
("wrath of god" groupie)

[h0ughy (David)]

Wow, they are great, thats one way to recharge the batteries! I like #4 too

[33South (Chris)]

Great, yep #4 does it for me to, couldnt you get any closer

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Love 'em Rob Awesome #4

[iceman (Mike)]

Great idea stacking multiple shots for #4. I'm surprised the clouds didn't all "smooth out" though - did you select the sky from one of them to overlay?

Excellent shots

Thanks guy's, I thought #4 might interest you. I was going post it
as the biggest strike I've ever seen but thought maybe that might be
a bit unbelievable lol

David, "the hand of Hell" is still my fav too!

33South, if I had a tripod I'd be somewhere over in that paddock of Xmas
tree kindly supplied by the NSW goverment. Although the pic's dont
show them too well but we have about 30,000-40,000 Xmas tree size
pines planeted around our village.

Stacking them has been an idea I've had for sometime. There are several
more grabs I couldn't include because they lit up the surounding cloud
to much. I selected all the ones that had nicely defined strikes, except for
about 2 or 3 of them which needed to be tweaked. And then just stacked
them as is. I thought I would try this idea using the avi format mainly
because I dont have a camera tripod yet but plan to try again using
exposure times and high resolution in standard camera mode.

Interesting to see how centralised the strikes are. I have really had a
problem of aiming it's the timing thats the tricky one lol but then if you
seeing lightening in action often you start to get instincts on where things
might happen.

Mike, the sky is actually a mixture of all 20 images. Here's what the top
frame looks like. You can see the central puff of cloud doesn't even
register in the stacked version.

regards,CS

[Striker (Tony)]

Nice shots Rob..

Picture 4 does it for me.

Well done

thanks Tony

[33South (Chris)]

Originally Posted by xrekcor

Canon Powershot A84, I continually try and tweak the settings when trying to nab lightening shots so I couldn't tell you settings
except ISO 50

For your records pulled this out of the first 3 images

1. FL=13.44, f=4.51,ex=1/8s,full auto mode

2. FL=5.41,f=4.51,ex=10s,auto white balance

3. FL=5.41,f=3.19,ex=15s,auto white balance

[TidaLpHasE]

great shots Rob, it's a buzz getting any at all, you have a habbit of getting super shots.

Well done, i would say keep em coming, but that would mean clouds, and we have enough of them at the moment.

Thanks Trevor

I'm pleased you enjoy them. I love storms and any chance I can
get to photograph them. I would dearly love a better camera plus
a tripod would be handy. But being new to photography I'm still
building up gear.

33South, thanks man.... I was being lazy

We got horizon to horizon clear skies here tonight which I haven't
seen here for at least 2 months Waaaaaahoooooo!!!!!!!!. Boy I'm
excited I'm gonna be out all night : ) even had a sleep this arvo to
prepare. So I hope everybody is getting some. Anyways it's dark
scope is cooled, time to look further a field.

Have a great weenkend guys!

regards,CS