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Last night in Woolgoolga we had a storm such as I have never seen, anywhere. The lightning was continual eg striking every 2-3 seconds, for about 4 hours. Took this shot, it's fairly crude being taken through the flyscreen, but old Jack across the road will no doubt appreciate the print I am going to give him.

Blimey, that's straight out of war of the worlds, get Tom Cruise and run for your life !!

Great shot by the way

Good capture max.........but are you removing the bin before you do a print......

Actually I have sent this pic to the local Coffs paper, they (Coffs City Council) forgot to pick up a number of the old wheelie bins from this street last week and I am hoping to shame them into action. This bin is one of the forgotten ones. However, for old Jack's photo, yes, I will empty the bin

Great shot Max, when you see the power of these things it makes you realise just how insignificant man actually is.

Bob.

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Top shot Max, I bet the boom came quicly after this bolt

moggy wrote:Great shot Max, when you see the power of these things it makes you realise just how insignificant man actually is.

Bob.

.

A truer word has never been spoken Bob

See Psalm 19:1

Alpha_7 wrote:Top shot Max, I bet the boom came quicly after this bolt

Actually Craig, there were so many booms, literally hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, it just went on for hour after hour, actually the street was more in full light than darkness for most of the time, and this at 10.30pm and afterwards!

Talked with a neighbour a minute ago, I think the surfclub has been de-roofed!

Nikon boy wrote:Blimey, that's straight out of war of the worlds, get Tom Cruise and run for your life !!

Great shot by the way

I would suggest - Leave Tom Cruise and run for your life

And I concur - great shot.

Terrific capture Max
cheers
marco

Greg B wrote:

Nikon boy wrote:Blimey, that's straight out of war of the worlds, get Tom Cruise and run for your life !!

Great shot by the way

I would suggest - Leave Tom Cruise and run for your life

And I concur - great shot.

Personally Greg, I would prefer a roast lamb dinner to Tom Cruise anyday

Wow, the power in a strike like that must be amazing Great capture, wonder where/what it hit?

mudder wrote:Wow, the power in a strike like that must be amazing Great capture, wonder where/what it hit?

The surf club

Talked with a neighbour a minute ago, I think the surfclub has been de-roofed!

great capture Max. On the left hand side, is that normal with lightning? It looks like clouds being displaced along the strike. Or is that just your screen moving from the impact

cheers,

radar

One of our staff in Brisbane had a very nasty experience with lightning a
couple of weeks ago.

She was in the shower and lightning struck the house. It transpired that
the house had not been properly grounded during construction, and as a
result, she took a full hit from the current through the plumbing and the
water.

Has been a sick girl ever since, including some heart problems a few
nights ago (and this is a young, otherwise healthy 20ish girl)

(The house is approx 5 years old - the building company is paying all
medical bills, and I would expect there will be a compensation claim to
follow)

This is different than being out and about and aware of what you are
doing, but it is a reminder of how dangerous lightning can be.

mudder wrote:Wow, the power in a strike like that must be amazing Great capture, wonder where/what it hit?

Mudder, it was actually well behind old Jack's house, maybe a block away, not sure what it hit, but there were hundreds of hits like that in the space of an hour, spectacular.

radar wrote:The surf club r

Actually Radar, the surf club roof ended up, evidently, a couple of blocks away on the roof of a block of flats. Robyn went for a walk today to see the damage and couldn't find the displaced roof - it was gone.

Max, quite an amazing shot, just saw it now, great capture and I am sure old Jack will love it

Thanks Glen, actually Radar, the top left hand corner of the image is a crude clone attempt on my part to get rid of a part of my house's eaves that were in the way! Up close you can actually see the flyscreen in the image, and it didn't print particularly well. But a great storm nonetheless.

It was quite strange, I took approx 70-80 photos at 30", 15", 10" and bulb settings, but none turned out except this one, which was the very first shot. The others were just too light, it was literally daylight most of the time, and the shots looked like a normal sunny afternoon street scene.

Lightning shots are exceptionally hard to take, I think at least in my case you just need to fluke it!

My settings were:

Manual F3.5
Focal length 18mm
Shutter speed 30"
Tripod

If you were finding the shots too bright, I would suggest a shorter expsoure and maybe shooting at f8 may of helped reduce the problem.
But maybe as you said it was just such an intense storm that their wasn't a good way of capturing it...

having enjoyed a few storm chases now, I find that using the f8-11 30" @18mm worked best for me.

Love the shot mate, that's one hell of a strike.

I was about to hit the sack at 3am this morning when this front pushed through with a hyperactive cell started booming just 10km from home. Did a chase through Brissy for three hours and now am kicking myself that I didnt think to bring the shots on disk to work to upload (my adsl connection is missing the rather essential modem)

Just looks like an SB 800 flash to me Max

No SB800, just inverted lightning

http://www.pixspot.com/displayimage.php?album=192&pos=17