Lightning over Oslo

Published July 27th, 2006 in: Photography

Lightning in Oslo

Anyone that has tried to shoot lightning, knows it can be quite tricky. Last night we had a big lightning storm over Oslo, and tricky it got:

[Lightning large version]

As the amateur I am - a good half hour was spent just watching the inferno - before it finally dawned on me (!) that I probably should get my camera out and try to capture a lightning. Eh..!

Lightning Storm over Oslo - full serie

I need a ref

After getting the camera on the tripod I started snapping away, just wanting to capture a first lightning for a reference shot. I needed a starting point for some camera adjustments. However, I didn't manage to capture a single lightning, so - after analyzing my utter cluelessness - I turned the exposure up to 10 seconds, adjusted the aperture to 10 and the ISO to 800 (just following my happy-go-lucky feeling of course). Still no luck, not one friggin lightning! I mean - there were lightning bolts going off all over the place, but they all seemed to happen in between my shots.

(un)Lucky Strike

Suddenly a big one went off straight in front of my viewfinder - and - I GOT IT!. I continued to shoot, but no more luck. Later, when I got the image up in Photoshop, it became pretty clear that it was over exposed and washed out. Now, if I only had gotten that first reference shot...

Left is an overview of all the shots in the lightning serie, shot over a period of an hour. As you can see from the five shots leading up to the lightning, I adjusted the aperture down, then back up again. I wasn't confident on how much light I needed for a big lightning bolt. I wish I had kept it down.

So where did it hit?

The lightning hit right next to the Tryvann Tower, most likely hitting the Tryvann water (see the lightning strike location on Yahoo! Maps).

Here's a link to the original shot.

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