How to photograph lightning without gambling on the shutter

01

What camera settings work at night?

Manual mode, ISO 100, an exposure of 20 to 30 seconds and an aperture around f/8 for distant storms or f/11 for close bright strikes. Focus manually at infinity, put the camera on a tripod, and use a remote release or intervalometer so nothing shakes it.

The reason this works is that the lightning exposes itself. A strike is far brighter than everything around it and lasts a fraction of a second, so the aperture controls how bright the bolt records while shutter duration controls how much of the surrounding scene builds up. Opening the shutter wider will not make the strike appear more often, it will only blow out the channel.

Aperture is therefore your main adjustment. If the bolts come out as flat white with no internal structure, close down to f/11 or f/16. If they are thin and dim, open toward f/5.6. Distance matters here as much as strength, which is why the same settings behave differently as a storm approaches.

Shoot continuously rather than trying to react. Set the intervalometer to fire back-to-back 20 second frames and let it run. Human reaction time is around 200 ms, and a return stroke is over long before that, so pressing the shutter when you see a flash reliably captures nothing.

02

Why do you need a trigger in daylight?

Because a 30 second daytime exposure is hopelessly overexposed, so you cannot use the leave-it-open method. A lightning trigger watches for the flash with an optical sensor and fires the shutter in a few milliseconds, fast enough to catch the strokes that follow the first one.

A trigger works because most flashes are not single events. A typical cloud-to-ground flash contains several return strokes separated by tens of milliseconds, so a sensor that reacts to the first stroke within a few milliseconds still has subsequent strokes to record. That timing is out of reach for a person.

A strong neutral density filter, commonly 6 to 10 stops, is the other half of daytime work. It cuts the ambient light enough to run exposures of several seconds rather than fractions of one, which widens the window in which a strike can occur inside your frame. With a trigger and an ND filter together you get both a fast reaction and a longer window.

Triggers earn their place at night too, mainly by cutting the number of empty frames you have to review afterwards.

03

How do you frame a shot when you cannot predict the strike?

Use a wider lens than feels necessary and give the sky most of the frame. Lightning does not repeat in the same place, so a tight composition is a bet you will usually lose. Include a foreground with a recognisable horizon so the frame still works when the bolt lands off-centre.

Watch which part of the storm is producing before committing. A live strike map shows where the activity actually is over the last few minutes and which way the cluster is moving, which is more reliable than judging from the flashes you happen to see. Radar shows the precipitation core, and the two together tell you where to point.

Storms produce lightning in the same broad region for a while, so a few minutes of watching before setting up costs little and improves the hit rate.

04

How do you shoot lightning safely?[1]

Shoot from inside a building or a hard-topped vehicle, or from a doorway you can retreat into. If you can hear thunder you are within strike range, and a tripod on open ground with a person standing beside it is close to the worst possible arrangement.

Photographing an approaching storm is more dangerous than photographing a departing one, because the first strike from the leading edge arrives with no earlier thunder to warn you. Positive strikes from a storm's anvil can also land more than 10 km ahead of the rain, under sky that still looks clear.

A vehicle works as a shelter because the metal shell carries current around the occupants, so shoot through an open window with the camera on a beanbag rather than standing outside next to it. The 30 minute wait after the last thunder applies to packing up, and the trailing edge of a storm remains electrically active well after the rain stops.