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Hi everyone,

With all the stormy weather and trying to capture lightning with a tiny Canon A85 Powershot, I assure you, can be frustrating. However got a moment of some nice light.

No PS used except for resizing the image, and removing a power cable from the top corner.

http://images1.fotopic.net/?iid=ydvc61&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

Look forward to the comments.

Nice capture, I find even with my D70 the lightning can be literally very hit and miss. I'm not sure on the limitations of your camera but I would assume it woudl increase the level of difficulty on capturing good lightning shots. However it doesn't seem to have problems with a nice sunset
I like the silloeutte of the tree and perhaps if you could bring it out a little more against the dark part of the sky it would help.

Thanks Craig.

My camera is just a point and shoot compact Canon. But that said, it does have nice results. Obviously not as fast as the D70 and hence I do miss out on the lightning.

Currently looking to buy a D70 if I can get my hands on one.

This just goes to prove that it's the person behind the camera that makes the difference.

May I also suggest, if you haven't already tried, using a long shutter speed, say 2 to 10 seconds. You'll need to be extremely lucky to time your shutter release with the lightning flash, if you're using faster shutter speeds than what I have suggested. Anticipating when the lightning will strike is virtually impossible....

Of course, if your Canon P&S doesn't have shutter speeds this slow, you may need to work on your reflexes

Aussie Dave actually when is fairly predicatable, it's just where is the hard bit

Well it is fairly predictable when an electrical storm is happening and you can time the intervals between strikes.

kipper wrote:Aussie Dave actually when is fairly predicatable, it's just where is the hard bit

Well it is fairly predictable when an electrical storm is happening and you can time the intervals between strikes.

that's interesting info Kipper. Would it be predictable to within 1/2 a second (or less), I wonder ?? If one were trying to shoot at speeds faster than a second, you'd want to hope the timing was very continous.

...and then there's the "where" part, as you've mentioned. I guess that's why great lightning shots are always very impressive.