Pic I shot tonight...

abodyjoe said

your talking over my head now...lol sure my camera can do it, its the operator that cant..lol

have a nikon d90

tri pod-check
remote- check
knowlege- nope..lol

Click to expand...

Ah, you can do it. Just set the camera for manual adjustment of everything---probably a big M on the control dial---and then adjust ISO, apterture (f-stop) and shutter speed to be the required values. You need a long shutter speed to increase your chances of capturing a flash/bolt. You need lower ISO settings cause lightning is damn bright and you're collecting a lot of light over a long exposure. You'll also need to pick a fairly large aperture (f-stop) cause you want a pretty wide depth of field.

Another thing...You'll need to manually focus close to infinity---I generally do this by finding a distant object, focusing the camera on that using autofocus and switching to manual focus from there---so the camera doesn't need to adjust the focus any more. Pretty much every DSLR will let you manually focus your lenses, and when you focus at close to infinity and with a larger aperture you'll stand a higher chance of getting everything in focus.

Hope that makes sense. :) It should at least get you going in the right direction. You might have to dig out your camera's manual to figure out how to change the settings, but that shouldn't be too bad.

Good luck!

jaimus: thanks. The city lights gave the clouds in that area an orange-ish, sodium-vapor-lamp coloring.