How to Capture Lightning—-Monday, July 24, 2017

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Joe Cooper sent me a series of lightening photos he took with his IPhone and

Instructions on how to ‘capture lightning’ with your smartphone.

Hi Linda.

I use an iPhone, and this is what works for me.

Take a video of the thunderstorms, that way you’ll surely catch a good bolt of lightning at some point.

Then play that back on your phone. Pause it when you see a good bolt. There should be a scroll bar of your video at the bottom of your screen.

You can move that video forward and back frame by frame by touching the scrollbar of the video at the bottom. And while it is staying in pause mode, you might be able to find a good shot of a lightning bolt.

Once you have a good frame of what you would like for a picture, touch the screen again, but off to the side, so it does not come out of pause mode. This should remove the menus and show only the picture on the screen.

Then by pressing the home– then the power button — in quick, but not hurried fashion, it takes a screenshot picture.

After reading your post the other day I thought about it in relation to a thunderstorm that I had shot on video just a few days before. So I tried it, and it works.

The light at the bottom is the street light in front of our neighbors house.

This was a thunderhead of a storm at least 20 miles to the south of us, going like crazy. It was a clear sky above us. And there was not a sound coming from all the lightning!

Hope all is well, and good to hear Boomer is well.

Joe

Then in a couple of days he wrote:

“Staying downtown Chicago tonight, at friend of my wife’s. Caught this one.

By the way, for perspective, we were on the 73rd floor of this building.  That strike was looking east from downtown Chicago. So the strike was likely over the state of Michigan side of Lake Michigan.
Here’s a daylight pic.”

Joe

How cool this all is!  Thanks, Joe!  Now those of us who have IPhones, can maybe get some good shots of lightening.

I think I’m going to try this on my regular camera to see if it might work the same way.  One never knows!

Your friend on a western Colorado farm

Linda

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