When I'm not shooting astro pictures at night, it's usually because the moon is too bright, which makes astro-photography with the telescope difficult.... or because it's raining small animals and/or lightning.
Last night lightning was the culprit.
I've often taken advantage of good lightning storms and taken the camera out on the tripod and photographed lightning. It's exciting and pretty darn cool when you capture it on film.
Also, lightning does indeed strike in the same place twice, so don't believe that old wives tale.
Here are two shots from last night's thunderstorm. All taken with the Nikon F2 and a standard lens.
Ektar 100 because that's what I had left in the camera and slow film is best for lightning shots anyway since the shutter is left open for so long.
The Ektar does seem to have a certain red/magenta shift to it with long exposures. I only cropped out the tops of the frames but did not alter the color or contrast so you could see it "au natural"
These two were shot at f/8 anywhere between two to three minutes. I just wait for the lightning to show up and then trip the shutter and wait for it to strike before closing the shutter. In a good storm you can easily catch half a dozen or so strikes on a 36 exposure roll, more if you practice a lot like I do. I usually don't leave the shutter open for longer than 4 minutes so it won't be so blown out or messy looking.
