Lightning is one of the things I look forward to most during Spring and Summer months! I love photography and have been able to get some nice lightning strikes normally with my digital SLR camera. Lightning on a cell phone isn’t that difficult, however, assuming you have some know-how and a more advanced camera app on your phone. There is certainly luck involved, but a little technical knowledge and a cell phone with advanced options can allow you to catch Mother Nature’s natural fireworks!
Firstly, safety is most important. Being on a porch or anywhere outdoors is unsafe. Being under a tree is unsafe. Being next to a fence is unsafe. Being close to metal underground piping is unsafe. I think you get the point! The safest place to photograph lightning is inside of a house (through the window) or in a vehicle with the windows up. You don’t get wet that way either!
Lightning photography is dangerous and lightning isn’t very forgiving (i.e. is deadly), so please be safe!
The key to capturing lightning, given you can’t predict when it will occur, is to open the exposure on the camera so you can capture several seconds at a time. Only certain phones allow for this, but newer Android phones seem to be leading the way–it is called “Pro Mode”. Different phones have different options in Pro Mode:
- Being able to open the exposure for several seconds is helpful
- Lowering the ISO and/or aperture (f-stop) to let less light in is usually helpful, especially if it is still dusk
- Because the camera is taking in light for a longer period of time, there is no way a human can hold the camera still, so you will need to place it on a window ledge, the ground, or something else to keep it absolutely still
- Focus for lightning needs to be exact. Usually your subject is (better be) far enough away that you can choose manual focus and set to infinity.
My Samsung Note 5 camera allows for control of the focus, ISO and Exposure, so I lowered the ISO to the lowest setting (not Auto), changed to manual focus and set to infinity, and chose 4 second exposures. I then positioned the camera on the ground and/or window pane so it would be absolutely still and repeatably pushed the trigger. If you have a rapid fire mode, this could work instead of the longer exposure as well.
Arrows (from left to right) show Pro Mode ISO, Exposure and Focus setting options.
ISO at its lowest setting; tells the “film” to absorb the least amount of light (and noise) which is needed because the lightning is so bright. If you’re finding that the lightning isn’t showing up, increase this setting to allow more light to be captured.
Focus is set to infinity. Mountains is infinity and flower is macro–or up close. Most lightning is (better be) far enough away to be considered “infinity” distance.
Exposure can go up to 10 seconds on this camera, or as quick as 1/24000th of a second. Since lightning is so quick, all this setting is for is to make it easier to capture the lightning by having the exposure open for longer periods of time in between when you have to fire the shutter. Great since you have no idea when it will happen.
TIP! Lightning tends to occur (rule of thumb, definitely not scientific) at regular intervals, so i often count the amount of seconds between each bolt. Once I get within 1-2 seconds of when it “should” occur, I open the shutter. I also just continuously trigger the shutter so it is open most of the time.
So now that the setup is out of the way, here are some examples of lightning I caught and some tips and tricks.
Here I had the camera placed on a light post. Notice the focus of the foreground is not tight, this is because there is too much movement in the camera over the 4 seconds the shutter is open.
Again, too blurry of a picture due to the unsteady placement of the phone.
So I switched to the sidewalk which was much more sturdy. I also used my shoe to give something to lean against to make it more sturdy. Now the foreground is in better focus. Lightning is still far enough away to be outside, and to not be too bright to photograph.
Lightning still far enough away (about 10 seconds between bolt and thunder) to not completely blow out the amount of light the bolts produce. Cloud to Ground bolts will most always be brighter, as in the case with the left both that found its ground.
This anvil crawler didn’t strike ground and wasn’t too bright to be captured.
Okay, these are getting too close, not only is it dangerous but you don’t get good pictures. With the ISO setting at its lowest it is allowing the least amount of light to be captured, but still it is too much. If you had an f-stop aperture setting you’d want to close the shutter letting less light in (closing the aperture is increasing the f-stop number, by the way)…but this is a limit of my cell phone’s camera.
This one is a good capture, although it is getting a little too close for comfort, time to head inside!
Luckily the window was tinted a bit, or this would have been way too much light. This was just a few blocks away. The window pane and window allowed for very sturdy aids to keep the camera steady. Although in cases like this, the only light captured by the phone is coming from the lightning, so at that instant in time is the only time there was light, so sturdiness isn’t as important because I don’t have any other light sources in the field of view.
Since I was focused on infinity, the rain on the window didn’t really obscure the subject of the photo. You an see the raindrops as hexagon white blobs in the upper/center part of the photo.
/ davealex
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/ obliqrecordings
