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Here's a few pics from Saturday nights storm activity around the Warrumbungles.
30mm @f/13, 2 X 15 sec exposurs added:




30mm 15sec@f/14, 3 X 15 sec exposures added:



and a 10.5mm fisheye view, 20 sec@f/8, showing the Uppsala Schmidt that I work with on the left, the NSW Automatic Patrol Telescope with the A shaped roof, the Korean Telescope built into a container, with the Anglo-Australian Telescope dome above it but about half a kilometre further away, the ROTSE telescope with its lid open! The auto rain detector kicked in shortly afterwards, and the CONCAM fisheye camera (which isnt working at the moment) on the pipe mount.



Gordon

Awesome stuff Gordon, a very impressive display of nature's power!

excellent! do know what makes these shots work imho... it's the interesting foreground as well as the lightning...

well done.

cheers

my favourite here is the last.

works well with the observatory lit up

Steve

Hi Gordon,

I had enough of storm photos a while back, but still decided to look at yours, glad I did. What I like as well is that you have some nice foreground, especially in the last one, works great for me.

Well captured,

Cheers,

Andre.

Well captured Gordon, spectacular stuff indeed and very hard to shoot. You've inspired me to go and photograph a few more storms around the north coast.

in my opinion, a storm shot wont work if it is just lightning.
or just black stuff that is the ground.


The fact that we can see stuff in the forground makes the last for me.

steve

I like the last one best also Gordon, gives scale but also more interesting with your story line.

The lightning looks very powerful!

Gordon

These are great shots, but your watermark really detracts from them.

I have been pretty much over lightning/storm pics lately, but like the others comments the quality of these is enhanced greatly by the foreground.

Spectacular images Gordon. Well done.
cheers
marco

Thanks all for the comments. Yes I too like the one with multiple observatory buildings in it. I had a hard time trying to get that to work- getting enough light to show the foreground without having a large saturated blob in the sky proved to be difficult, so much adjusting of exposure duration and f/# was done.
And yes Stubbsy, its time to go in search of some pec pads I did a lot of lens swapping during the storm, and that no doubt added more dust as it was quite blustery up here. I've since been inside the camera with our super dry compressed air, but there are a couple of spots that refuse to budge.

There are a couple more pics with sunset colours posted at:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~loomberah/Feb18storm.htm

Gordon

Awesome images Gordon. Thanks for sharing. By the way, how many shots did you take of the last scene before you got the sky and buildings exposed correctly? Is it a merged/blended exposure?

Absolutely brilliant.

ABG wrote:Awesome images Gordon. Thanks for sharing. By the way, how many shots did you take of the last scene before you got the sky and buildings exposed correctly? Is it a merged/blended exposure?

Thanks, over a dozen, I was deleting lots as I took them all night actually, so I didnt overflow the 1Gb CF. Of course, luck plays a fair part in getting a decent lightning bolt or 2 at the correct time as well, I sure missed lots between exposures, and just out of view.
Its a single exposure of 20 sec, just a slight play with the curves and D-lighting, colour balance, making it a bit less blue, and a small amount of sharpening.

Gordon