How To PHOTOGRAPH LIGHTNING During The Day

[@roberttangen3508]

A meteorologist friend of mine says an important thing to remember is that the bolts can hit anywhere in a 10 mile radius of the originating thunderhead. So stay safe

[@BuckeL91]

It's also the strongest lightning that can travel the furthest.

[@Drewcooks24]

Awesome. We get some big lightning storms where I live. I want to try this out next time we get one

[@davidelliott6610]

great video, excellent content and some good tips !

[@BrentHall]

Thanks David, I'm glad it helped!

[@fasbiks4me]

That's the volcanoes by the small airport. Very cool!

[@ironian24]

Excellent video buddy, we are having lightning here in the UK right now so just needed to polish up on a daytime lightning shot, I have the 10 stop and had the impression that would work so here goes 😀

[@BrentHall]

Thanks man, I'm glad it helped! Good luck with it over there, hope you get some good bolts.

[@ironian24]

@@BrentHall yeah not.on me thoug hey lol.

[@mcdirt7838]

Great video. I was out on a boat the other day (daytime) & a thunder storm came through. Being in a boat, I couldn’t take long exposures so I just tried taking a shot when I saw lightning. Didn’t work that well and totally missed all the best strikes. I was wondering what I could have done to increase my chances of getting good shots and thought I’d have been better shooting 4K video and then extracting frames from that to get my photos. Any thoughts/tips on doing that better or will it not work?

[@BrentHall]

Yeah, you could do that. I've pulled lightning stills from video before. Just up your shutter speed a bit from the usual 180 rule for filming. It still probably won't look quite as good as from a regular still, but I doubt you'd notice too much.

[@mcdirt7838]

Thanks for that - if I get the chance again, then hopefully I’ll be more prepared and be able to get some decent shots.

[@westernncstormwatching3531]

How much did you under expose for your shots in this video and your Albuquerque shots?

[@shirlenehigbie5677]

Great video and information ..... Thanks for sharing ..... !!!

[@ToddReuterOutdoors]

Do you absolutely need an ND filter for daytime lightning? Can you stop down to F11-F22 and still achieve a daytime bolt capture with a lightning trigger?

[@BrentHall]

It just depends on the amount of ambient light. I usually try to keep my shutter speed around 0.5 sec for daytime lightning, but sometimes, even stopped down I can't get that, so I'll throw an ND on there. Plus I don't like to shoot past f16 for most things if I can avoid it due to diffraction.

[@dgmp78]

I love taking videos of lightning...and when it's raining and that rainbow just appears after... great video! Storms are so much different than ones here in Hawai'i . I'm learning... mahalo!! 🤙

[@BrentHall]

I miss Hawaii so much! Hopefully I'll get back there soon. 😁 I'd love to do a photo workshop out there.

[@dgmp78]

@@BrentHall that be awesome... 🤙

[@burt5057]

Hi. Great video. Does it matter which filter you put nearest the lens. ND or Polariser?

[@BrentHall]

Theoretically, no, but depending on your filter system, you may only have one option for how to stack them. Also, I've been using the Breakthrough dark cpl filters which have the nd and cpl built into one and they are awesome.

[@burt5057]

Thanks. Up to now I've been been putting the 6 stop Nd on first. Then if I need extra, a cpl. I'll take a look at the combined filter though. Could be just the thing.

[@devinrussel9509]

Good stuff, Brent. Have you considered purchasing one of the many lightning triggers available on the market? When it comes to capturing daytime lightning, my go-to device is the LightningTrigger-IV. Throw that on your camera, together with your ND, and you’re almost guaranteed a daytime bolt capture.

[@BrentHall]

Thanks Devin! I've thought about it, but as a timelapse photographer, I'm usually just out doing timelapses anyways, and I can use them for multiple things, so I never got one.

[@ISleepAndIKnowThings]

I wish I knew more about photography. Less than a novice. Mainly rely on my phone and just eyeing stuff. Using a P30 Pro now. Actually caught a bolt on it luckily with night mode. So it can be done. Need to study up and learn how to use the pro mode to really get into the meat of it all. Btw, enjoyed the video!

[@BrentHall]

Oh you can definitely get some lightning with that phone. I have gotten some really decent shots with my S9+ in pro mode. You can get filters for the phone too if you need. Just get you a decent little tripod and phone mount, set in pro mode and follow the same guidelines and you'll be good to go.

[@fymchannel3946]

what kind filter did you use for lightning photography? cpl? uv?

[@BrentHall]

ND filter.

[@kerryjung]

Thanks for walking us through your thought process. As a photographer I'm always debating if I should take my full camera kit with me on hikes or just my S10+. A while back ago you did a video with your moments lens and mentioned that you can't use the tele lens on the Samsung phone with your moments 58mm to get real close-up (4X) shots. Do you know if there is a work around yet?

[@BrentHall]

Yeah, since I had the pie update, the camera app seems to allow the moment tele to be used over the native tele, though sometimes it still tries to force it back to the main lens. when it does this I simply hit the tele button again, change modes and then change back to photo, or restart the camera app. It's slightly annoying, but it does work now though, if a bit finicky.

[@clemens974]

hi Brent, thanks fo the beautiful video! Yesterday I tried to catch some lightnings with my sony and a 10 stop ND filter (It was 7PM). I was quite happy because I saw that the camera catching a lot of them...but when I watched the pictures preview on my computer I couldn't find no Lightning at all!!! :-( How can it be possible? Maybe to much exposure? (13" -f.7)

[@BrentHall]

Yeah, I usually try to shoot for a couple stops under exposed, otherwise the lightning can get down out.

[@DarrenJSpoonley]

Awesome work brotha

[@BrentHall]

Muchos Gracias! :P

[@mkostial05]

Another awesome video!

[@BrentHall]

Muchos gracias! 😀

[@tyeeggleston6159]

Brent, that NM pic is awesome. Here in S. Texas area, i love to take photos of lightning at night, my main issue is that i shoot in "Bulb" mode and get a lot of noise. Do you recommend "Manual" focus and possibly under exposing for night shots?. Never had much luck during the day, but ill try to remember your tips when we get another storm come through in the day time. Thanks for the great video, just what i was looking for.

[@BrentHall]

Thanks Tye. Yeah, I don't tend to shoot in bulb mode that often. It can definitely be prone to making more hot pixels on your sensor. Depending on how close you are to the lightning and if you're composition has a lot of city lights in it, then you could definitely underexpose a bit so as not to blow out the lightning bolts and the city lights as much, and I pretty much always manual focus for astro and night landscape stuff.

[@marykrigbaum9021]

Have you tried taking lightning pictures with the S23 Ultra?

[@BartDeBruyn]

f22 is way too small. It's good to get your shutter speed up, but you'll lose a lot of detail and brightnes from your lightning.

[@marcruby1395]

can I use a wide angle lens?

[@BrentHall]

Sure, but if the lightning is super far away then it won't show up as well.

[@Blaydrnnnr]

Man, I cant wait to try to achieve something close to this... As you know I'm working mostly on mobile right now, so I've been really trying to work with exposure stacking, and now maybe even some focus stacking... I have 3, 6, and 10 stop filters, and a circular polarizer, so I REALLY hope I can try this out soon. just missed a hell of a lightning storm yesterday... Alittle confused on your timelapse interval though....2 seconds? Also.. I REALLY need to get a much better understanding of my f-stop math....LOL.... Wish the third party apps would be able to get me longer shutter speeds...right now, only the native app will let me do long exposures.... Great vid Brent.. love this....

[@BrentHall]

You should definitely still be able to do it with the phone. I've gotten some pretty decent images with mine. If it's too bright, you might have to stack the filters, and make sure your aperture is set to the f/2.4. On the phone you'll most likely just have to manually take a bunch of images though, since doing high quality timelapses with actual still, and raw images isn't really possible.

[@RichardBO9]

Thanks, Brent! Great video. So to recap, you are stopping down 1-2 stops from your foreground exposure with the ND filter on? Are you using the base ISO? Hopefully, I can use all of this tonight. We got dumped on last night. 🤠

[@BrentHall]

Thanks! Yeah, I'm keeping it around 1-2 stops under what the camera thinks is properly exposed for the area where the lightning is. If your scene is really dark overall though, this becomes a little less necessary. If you're really close to the lightning or it's really dark and lots of lightning then you might still want to underexposed slightly so you don't blow the lightning out.

[@mananjoshi1289]

Brent Hall hey is the EOS R a better camera for vloging as well as a photography... Than the Sony alpha R4?

[@BrentHall]

I've never used a Sony before so I really couldn't say, though the eos R is a great all around camera.

[@mananjoshi1289]

Brent Hall thanks brother appreciated that...

[@BrentHall]

Sure thing, good luck with it.

[@wmbrennan]

Do you use ND filters at night?

[@BrentHall]

Not for lightning. I haven't been using ND filters that much for lightning at all anymore really. I've been trying to go for shorter shutter speeds (like ~ 0.5 sec) which usually reduces my need for filters these days.

[@XxSEETH3RxX]

I've taken pictures of lots of things but lightning is the biggest challenge.

[@BrentHall]

Yeah, it's tough, especially during the day.

[@XxSEETH3RxX]

@@BrentHall Finally did it yesterday. Around 6pm I went out and sat in the grocery store packing lot(safely inside my vehicle of course)as a storm came West of me about a mile away.

[@kadenbenjamin2203]

in Lima we have tornadoes

[@BrentHall]

We have lots of tornadoes here too! I love watching them. Someday I'll go chase some and get some good photos. 😁

[@chethanp8845]

Hi bro

[@BrentHall]

Hey. :P

[@chethanp8845]

@@BrentHall hi

[@freelectron2029]

you discussed everything expect how to work out exposure. you just glossed over all this. i thought this was a how to? tip if your going to make a how to then you need to tell people how to

[@BrentHall]

Sorry. In this case I would figure out what shutter speed you want, and then set your aperture and iso accordingly, and throw on a neutral density filter if it's still too bright.