Big lightning bolt hitting Minneapolis

[Cyberfish]

I was planning to catch one hitting the towers, but this will do, wish could have had the target not blocked by the bushes...

[finnbay]

Very nice!

[JohnK]

Cool shot! Did you use a lightning trigger, or take long exposures over and over until you got it?

[Cyberfish]

Cool shot! Did you use a lightning trigger, or take long exposures over and over until you got it?

I do the over and over thing!

[JohnK]

Me too, Mike.

[Dbl]

Nice timing!

[Paul]

A lightning trigger would be nice some times, but getting lucky is sometimes the best way to capture lighting. That and I am too cheap to buy something I couldnt use all year (this year anyaway). Maybe I would buy a used one if the price was right.

Great Capture though.

[aanderud]

Wow, that's awesome!

I installed some CHDK firmware on my old canon A590IS camera the other day in hopes of getting some lightning shots someday.

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Samples:_Lightning_photography

Quote:

Lightning Photography done automatically with MX3's Motion Detection

...

All lightning strikes are preceded by a leader-strike, the main strike(s) happening anywhere from 100-300 milliseconds after this leader-strike. While browsing the main CHDK Russian forums, I ran across these. Vitaly and others tested MX3's implementation of motion detection to see if it really was fast enough to capture lightning strikes. IT IS! [1] [2] [3]

And more -- [4] The 1st collection done with the usual manual method, tripping the shutter and waiting and hoping. The 2nd and 3rd collections were done automatically with a motion-detection script.

Now you can just set up the camera, run a simple motion detection script, then head back into the safety of shelter. Every one of your frames should have a lightning strike on it. No more risking your life while hoping that you might get one while keeping the shutter open! MX3, you may have just saved some lives (like mine)! :-) --