The right time of the day

[Shadowman]

Very nice.

It was 5 in the afternoon 2 days ago.

[Maritimer1]

Gorgeous. I like that touch of gold you left in the right corner.

[Crovean]

Thanks!
Took that shot in the car on BestBuy's parking lot
The image turned up really good after some PP.

[arith]

I'm not usually up at this time; sunrise is supposed to be around 4:40 and it is 5:30 am. I'm a bit surprised at how strong the light is. Reading the local news I discover a drive by shooting and stabbing murder happened 5 minutes from here, but the day after this was taken.

[rick55]

I'm not usually up at this time; sunrise is supposed to be around 4:40 and it is 5:30 am. I'm a bit surprised at how strong the light is. Reading the local news I discover a drive by shooting and stabbing murder happened 5 minutes from here, but the day after this was taken.

This could be a photo essay: a drive-by shooting 5 minutes from this scene. Beautiful shot, Steve.

Cheers,
Rick

[arith]

Cheers Rick, I was a bit worried about early morning shots given the kind of shooting going on 5 minutes walk from here. Actually I didn't see a soul until after 6 am. It is a bit surprising about the violence, a few murders over a year and weekly something happening around Andresey Passage which leads to the park.

[Sunray]

Taken about half an hour after sunset.

What do you think about the color? Is it to purple? I have got a minor colour deficiency and in this picture do not recognize if the color is set right. Lokking for your comments.

Take care
Robert

[carregwen]

Taken about half an hour after sunset.

What do you think about the color? Is it to purple? I have got a minor colour deficiency and in this picture do not recognize if the color is set right. Lokking for your comments.

Take care
Robert

An excellent shot, Robert. I don't think it is too purple, I just think it's too good!

[Dave Humphries]

What do you think about the color? Is it to purple? I have got a minor colour deficiency and in this picture do not recognize if the color is set right. Lokking for your comments.

Looks a natural blue to me, no problems.

Lightning isn't something I have seriously ever tried to catch yet, I must try one day.

Good shot,

[arith]

Taken about half an hour after sunset.

What do you think about the color? Is it to purple? I have got a minor colour deficiency and in this picture do not recognize if the color is set right. Lokking for your comments.

Take care
Robert

Did you just leave the shutter open and hope for the best, it must be hard to do lightning. The colour looks ok to me but my eyes are a bit tired.

[Sunray]

Hello Steve,

taking a picture of a lightning is much easier as you expect. It is just necessary to be patient. And of course, a little bit luck does help here much. The thunderstorm here did last for about an hour. During that hour I took about hundred pictures. And only one of them was pleasent. Beside the photographic tasks you have got to mind three facts that can cause real big problems.
1) Rain or hail.
2) Strong winds.
3) Lightnings.
Even if you are lucky and you can put your equipment under an roofed balcony you should take a closer look at the front of your lense. Rain and wind in combination will soon spray waterdrops over your lense. Even if it is nearly dark, use a lens hood. Use a very heavy tripod. Strong gust of wind can ruin your picture. And of course remember to chose a save location for you and your equipment that is protected from lightning.
If you are lucky, the thunderstorm is aproaching towards your position or just sideswipe you. These are the best positions to see "good" lighnings. If you are in the middle of the storm most of the lightnings that apear are behind clouds, so you only see the flashes, but no lightning structure.
The photograpic tasks are not that difficult.
Normally I would use a lense with a length of about 30mm and set the aperture between f/5.6 and f/11. I use iso 100 and set the camera timer to 30 seconds. Focus is set to manual. Shoot in raw and do stuff like white balance, brightness and exposure correction later on your pc. The aperture depends how much surrounding light is still there. If it is after sunset or darks as night during a thunderstorm I would use f/5.6. Maybe even f/4. If a "nice" lightning shows up in front of your camera just hold your hand in front of the lense. It ist so bright, that it does not matter much if the exposure time is not over jet. If you get more than one lightning after some time clouds will look like they are double exposed, due to movement. Taking pictures from lightnings is a little bit like using a flash, a real big flash. Nothing more, nothing less.

Take care.
Robert

[Klickit]

I like this, Robert. It is a tiny bit purple, but I can well imagine the actual scene was too. Whatever, it is a good capture.

[Crovean]

I know my next project would be.(waiting for a thunder storm) Thanks for the tip Robert!

[Antonio Correia]

The idea was to shoot with the full Moon light.
I drove to a place where I thought there would be no artificial lights but I couldn't for some reason. Indeed I have to try again when the Full Moon comes in July.
However, I shot this picture with 30 sec exposure and worked it on LR and CS as usual.
I don't like it much but it worth as an experiment which in fact I have done before some years ago.

[carregwen]

Interesting, Antonio. I see it was taken at 21:39. How dark was it? Was that GMT?

[Antonio Correia]

Interesting, Antonio. I see it was taken at 21:39. How dark was it? Was that GMT?

Hello Rob. In UK it is one hour later than in Portugal.
It was pretty dark. As much as I couldn't see clearly that the branch on the bottom right was there.
However, with the Moon light and as we get used to the darkness/ambient light we could move with some care because there were many plants hiding rocks and one could fall, camera and tripod with. Imagine the damages to the camera
We - we were 5 persons - had torches which were providing some guidance in the dark.
This is the original image.

The light was not so "brown" but towards teh blue. I was using auto WB to make the correction on the computer later.

I shot this plant with the light of a led torch holded by someone else. No tripod used.

[arith]

Hello Steve,

taking a picture of a lightning is much easier as you expect. It is just necessary to be patient. And of course, a little bit luck does help here much. The thunderstorm here did last for about an hour. During that hour I took about hundred pictures. And only one of them was pleasent. Beside the photographic tasks you have got to mind three facts that can cause real big problems.
1) Rain or hail.
2) Strong winds.
3) Lightnings.
Even if you are lucky and you can put your equipment under an roofed balcony you should take a closer look at the front of your lense. Rain and wind in combination will soon spray waterdrops over your lense. Even if it is nearly dark, use a lens hood. Use a very heavy tripod. Strong gust of wind can ruin your picture. And of course remember to chose a save location for you and your equipment that is protected from lightning.
If you are lucky, the thunderstorm is aproaching towards your position or just sideswipe you. These are the best positions to see "good" lighnings. If you are in the middle of the storm most of the lightnings that apear are behind clouds, so you only see the flashes, but no lightning structure.
The photograpic tasks are not that difficult.
Normally I would use a lense with a length of about 30mm and set the aperture between f/5.6 and f/11. I use iso 100 and set the camera timer to 30 seconds. Focus is set to manual. Shoot in raw and do stuff like white balance, brightness and exposure correction later on your pc. The aperture depends how much surrounding light is still there. If it is after sunset or darks as night during a thunderstorm I would use f/5.6. Maybe even f/4. If a "nice" lightning shows up in front of your camera just hold your hand in front of the lense. It ist so bright, that it does not matter much if the exposure time is not over jet. If you get more than one lightning after some time clouds will look like they are double exposed, due to movement. Taking pictures from lightnings is a little bit like using a flash, a real big flash. Nothing more, nothing less.

Take care.
Robert

How would you take it in the daytime?

I thought it would be possible to stack ND filters to make it a very long exposure say 1 second at f8 or 2 secs at f11 100 iso, but how much should you expose the ground ? -1 ev -2 ev 0 ev maybe, then you could use high speed drive to shoot up to 16 Raws 1/6 second apart or up to 90 jpegs on my camera but others could be better. Would this work?

I can only find one cloudy day pic and that was about 1/60 f9 @100 iso, so two ND8 filters should do it so long as the lightning goes off during exposure time. Is this crazy or is there a better way to get a daylight lightning shot?

[Sunray]

Hi Steve, I always was lucky to get thunderstorms in the late afternoon or at sunset time when I was going to capture them. I would try to use the second method with the ND filters. I would even try it with f/16.

bye
Robert

[Antonio Correia]

[Sunray]

Railroad bridge near Duisburg over river Rhine about half an hour bevor sunset.

bye
Robert