Chili's? Went there. Lightning? Tried to take pictures of it. Failed? Yes. Wanna know how to succeed? Continue reading.

    Tonight, me and my cousin Patrick went to Chili's.  It was happy hour, that means that you solely gorge on appetizers.  Patrick's choice was some kind of nachos with chicken and jalapenos on them, I ate one, it was good.  I took it to another level with TWO appetizers, yes, two of them.  I got boneless buffalo wings AND cheese sticks.  I thought for sure I was going to eat all of it, but I failed.  That isn't all I failed at tonight . . .

This is exactly what I see when I'm driving down the road with Patrick in his big ole green van.

    What else did I fail at tonight?  Well, I failed at taking pictures of lightning.  I know HOW to take pictures of lightning, but gale force winds and torrents of rain kinda messed that up for me.  I weighed the situation's pros and cons mentally:

Sweet pictures of lightning + Loss of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

!!!VS.!!!

No pictures of lightning + Preservation of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

    Needless to say, I chose contender number two, the preservation of my stuff.  I did manage to snap a couple shots before I realized it just wasn't worth going for and wiped my camera down and put it away.  No direct lightning in the frame, but it's kinda obvious what is going down.  Keep in mind that these pictures were taken at about 1:30 AM, so it was pitch black outside.

Looks like there was some lightning in the lower right, but unfortunately not directly in the frame.  You can see how brightly lit it caused the night sky to be though.

Again, taken in the dead of night.  No direct lightning in the frame, but you can see what's going on nearby in the lower left of the frame.  I compressed this picture way too much on accident, but it isn't a good picture so F it.

    So, are you wondering how in the hell you're actually SUPPOSED to take a picture of lightning assuming that you have proper cover, equipment, and all that?  I'll tell you how, and no, it isn't setting your shutter speed super fast and having godlike reflexes.  

HOW TO TAKE PICTURES OF LIGHTNING:

Things you'll need/be better off having:

If you buy from these links, I get like 15% of the the sale, so yeah, buy awesome things for sweet deals and help me get paid!

- A DSLR camera. Sweet deal for an awesome camera for beginners --> Canon EOS Rebel T1i

- A tripod (recommended).  Sweet deal for a so-so tripod --> Vista Explorer 60" Lightweight Tripod

- A remote shutter release (recommended). Super cheap shutter release -->  Remote Shutter Release for Canon Rebel

- Lightning.  Sorry, you can't buy this.
- Patience.  Or a paper towel with a mountain of xanax on it:

Mount St. Totem Pole for patience. Seriously though, don't do xanax mountain or any drugs at all for that matter.

 

    Step #1:  First off, if you have a tripod, set it up and make sure it's stable, frame your shot.  If you don't have a tripod, get ready for some tedious stuff like being ABSOLUTELY 100% COMPLETELY STILL for like a minute or so.  If you're tripod-less, frame your shot on something sturdy and stable so that you can hold the camera down without moving it.  If it moves, chances are your shot is gonna look blurry, so don't move!  Pretend someone is going to kill you if you move, just don't start crying, that will probably cause you to move.

    Step #2:  Now you want to switch your camera into manual mode, or whatever the setting is called on your camera where you can tweak all of your settings.  These are the settings I've had the best results with in the past, so apply these, but feel free to play around with stuff, you might stumble upon some crazy new method that blows everyone's minds, remember, the most awesome things ever discovered or invented came into existence by accident.  Recommended settings are as follows:

- Shutter speed:  Bulb

- Aperature, f stop, whatever you want to call it:  ~8.0

- ISO: 100

- Focus to infinity (if your camera has it, it's this symbol ∞).  If you can't figure it out or your camera simply doesn't have it, get the sky in focus the best you can, this can be pretty hard, so just do your best.

The rest of the settings are up to you, but these are crucial.

    Step #3:  You'll most likely want an exposure of about 30 seconds to 1 minute.  You can deal with a pinch lower, or you can deal with longer if the light isn't too overwhelming in the area that you're shooting in.  2 minutes is tolerable.  So when you feel like you're going to see some lightning, press the shutter release button, hold it! If you don't have a shutter release, get ready to hold the shutter button for a long time!  It's totally possible to get several strikes in one exposure, so get creative! 

    Step #4:  BDDDAP YUP, BDDDAP YUP!  You just took some sweet pictures of lightning, great job!  Post them and acquire slews of women. 

    So if you've done everything correctly, you should be happy right now.  And if you've messed up, which is totally your fault and not mine whatsoever, just comment and we'll try to figure out what went wrong and get you on the right track for next time!

Goodluck!

-Matt