Fantastic lightning photo by one of our regular customers, Gareth Pinckard from the Isle of Man. This fantastic image is a rare glimpse of mother nature at her most powerful. Capturing a photo like this needs preparation and thought.



A Canon EOS 50D was used set at f5.6 for a 30 second exposure at ISO 100 using a Canon 28-135 F3.5-5.6 IS USM lens, set at 28mm. The exposure was set for 30 seconds and the lightning struck 10 seconds into the 30 second exposure. Then the lens was covered with a piece of card so that no more strikes would burn out the picture. 

The camera was set on a Velbon CX-640 Camera Tripod. A Hahnel infra red remote control was used to activate the camera so there wouldn't be any vibration. No filter was used, the purple colour of the sky is all natural. The image was captured on a Sandisk Extreme 111 4GB Compact Flash, although no longer available, these were the best at the time. These have now been replaced by the faster SanDisk Extreme Compact flash 4gb, 40mb/sec!

Many thanks to Gareth Pinckard for this unusual photo, he took it whilst on holiday in Florida at Plantation Key.

Take a look at some more of Gareth's fantastic images at: Manxphoto.com