Photographing lightning
Capturing lightning is fun AND... not even that hard. At least, if you know how! Here are some tips to get you started.
One important note beforehand: never stand under a tree or other tall object (mast) while a storm is in progress. Lightning bolts always try to reach the positively charged Earth through tall, pointed objects. Similarly, it is not recommended to stand in a totally clear field: you will be a potential lightning rod yourself. Lightning still kills people every year. Be careful before you begin!
Choosing a nice location
It is always good to take a camera position that gives you a sufficient view of the spacious surroundings. The website Top.Flanders offers an overview of dozens of beautiful vantage points in French Flanders, West Flanders and Zeeland. Consult this list of viewpoints. You can also find them via the Top.Vlaanderen map: in the legend, check the option "Viewpoints".
Actually, a lot depends on what you want to use as a nice foreground: a windmill, a city, ... . Also keep in mind that you yourself (and preferably your camera as well) should stay dry! Ideally, of course, you can stand in a room and capture the landscape from a window. I used this technique to take the cover photo above. For this I chose a room on the top floor of Hostellerie Kemmelberg.
Choosing the right time
To capture one, you obviously need to have the opportunity first. For this, it is best to consult the weather forecasts and/or look for a website of so-called storm chasers. Often, lightning occurs during heat storms: i.e. during extremely balmy weather (usually at the end of a summer day).
Some websites with weather forecasts:
- Belgium: K.M.I.
- France: METEO France
- Netherlands: K.N.M.I.
You can monitor the situation in the very short term with sites that provide radar images of current cloud formations:
- Belgium: Buienradar.be
- France: Meteotradar.com
- Netherlands: Buienradar.nl
Usually you can see a storm coming from afar, especially if you are at a high vantage point. Here you can see what the sky looked like before the lightning shots were taken:
Choosing a correct lens and ISO setting
The choice of lens will largely be determined by the subject you want to capture. For a landscape, this will usually be a wide-angle lens. There is also another reason why it is best to shoot as wide as possible: the larger the subject, the more chance you will have of catching a lightning bolt. A very bright lens (f/1.2 or f/1.8) is certainly not necessary because you will have to choose a small aperture anyway. Why? Because a lightning bolt is very bright and if you choose a too large aperture, your image will be quickly overexposed. Consequently, you will normally go for a lower sensitivity. You may need to set the ISO on your camera to only 50 or 100.
Choosing a correct recording time
No one can predict when a lightning storm will occur. So you have to create a situation where your camera is almost always open while the storm passes. You do this by constantly taking shots of, say, 30 seconds. Of course you will have to choose a low ISO setting and aperture value; otherwise your image will be overexposed anyway and you don't want that. Don't forget that the lightning will additionally illuminate the opnae. So you set your camera to values that would normally produce an underexposed image. If one or more flashes occur during the 30 seconds, it will be correctly exposed.
Combine digitally
When you have made several exposures, without having changed the position of your camera(you work on a tripod!), you can have all these exposures digitally superimposed in image processing software. You then obtain one shot with incredibly many lightning bolts on it. You can then also combine your lightning shots with one normally exposed shot so that the foreground is nicely exposed.
Or do you really think that all those top photographers were in a superstorm? Of course not, it is often by combining such basic shots digitally that they achieve such beautiful effects. 😉
About the single shot/single shot we chose as the cover photo:
- Shooting date: May 4, 2023
- Shooting location: Top of the Kemmelberg, 156m high, Hostellerie Kemmelberg
- Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
- Lens: Canon EF 14 mm
- Shooting settings: f/13, ISO 800, 30 seconds
When we took some shots digitally together we obtained the dramatic end result below:
