Very Last minute dash to Ballydowane this evening for a passing lightning storm. Got a fairly good strike rate but as it was almost completely dark composing the images became very difficult. Below are the best of what I got. This is the second time I've managed to capture a lightning storm on the Copper coast , see the first occasion here
Ballydowane Lightning 2
Decided to give this a go on this occasion due to information on the www.lightningmaps.org website which shows the location of lightning strikes in real time. This showed me that lightning storm was on its way over the Irish sea and I could possibly see something from the coast.
Ballydowane Lightning 3
On the technical side, lightning isn’t actually that hard to capture if you have the ability to manually control the camera. In the case of these images it was well after sunset so I required a long exposure just to expose the image correctly anyway. Starting at 20 seconds this progressed all the way to 6 minutes as the light dropped. If you get a strike during the exposure you will capture it. If its not dark enough then the use of a Neutral density filter to slow down the shutter speed will accomplish the same thing. After that just keep on shooting. There is the obvious health and safety warning with this and if things get close its time to pack up and go. The hardest thing for me on this occasion was actually getting focus in the very low light.
Ballydowane Lightning 4
Ballydowane Lightning 5
Ballydowane Lightning 6
