Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information opinion website and e magazine. Lou's passion for the past 45 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
backcountry skiing and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free back country news and information here, and tons of Randonnee rando telemark info.
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Hey Greg,
Goes to show that we go through life the same way…dreaming of winter!
I just bought plane tickets to New Zealand to cure my fix!!
Steve
Nice pic Lou. Can you share your EXIF info on the picture? Also, any technique (tripod, etc.) that you used?
Scott, I use a tripod (have to for that kind of shot), using manual exposure I set a tight F stop then guess at the exposure time, and take a few test shots (assuming I’m shooting when there is still evening light, otherwise you just set the camera up to stay open as long as you want, then wait for the lightning). The idea is to use a long exposure time that keeps the camera shutter open waiting for the lightning. Then you just keep taking shots till you run out of memory card. During some shots the lightning will strike and that’s when you get the nice image. The thing I have the hardest time with is if I’m trying to get a foreground as I did in this shot, as I want the foreground to be in focus as well as the distant lightning. For this shot I set the lens at infinity, then backed off a hair so I had hyperfocal distance and got as much of the foreground in focus as possible. If necessary I then make up for slightly out of focus foreground by a bit of extra sharpening in Photoshop. A headlamp is essential for fiddling around with the lens and camera settings.
It also might work to just set the camera exposure on TV and dial in a nice long time, but then the exposure could get whacked out because of different light in the clouds and such.
Either way, if there is much evening light it also helps to use a low ISO so the camera wants to do nice long time exposures, and the resulting shots have less noise.
Here is the EXIF:
Original date/time: 2006:08:12 11:24:54
Exposure time: 10/1
Shutter speed: 10.00
F-stop: 13.0
ISO speed: 100
Focal length: 18.0000
Flash: Not fired
Exposure mode: Manual
White balance: Auto
Orientation: Top-left
Aperture: 7.4009
Exposure bias: 0.0000
Metering mode: Pattern
Exposure program: Manual