Lightning

jecottrell

I built a lightning trigger and have been waiting all monsoon season for a good storm. Finally had a good one to test it on a couple of evenings ago.









The underexposed shots are due to multiple strikes triggering the shutter a second time and closing it prematurely. I'll fix that in the firmware and give it another try.

Here is the entire gallery: Gallery

DaddyO

Good and sharp. Nice strikes... if a lighting strike can ever be nice.
Seems to like hitting something over to the right there.
I really don't see the last shot as under exposed. Wonder what others
will have to say concerning that.

Lighting trigger? Gotta look into that.

moose135

That's really nice work! Could you tell us a little more about the trigger you built? Thanks

adbsgicom

Agree w/ DaddyO. Second one is just a different type of shot, and equally stunning with the silhouette. Great job. Curious about what is entailed in building the trigger as well.

rwells

Very cool shots.

My preference is the darker, second shot.

Lighting trigger

jecottrell

Thanks guys.


I do some development work with micro-controllers and saw a $300 trigger available on the interwebs. I figured I could do it for cheaper. I did a little reading and learned that lightning is typically 100mS in duration (a tenth of a second.) Shutter lag in most DSLRs is about 50mS. That leaves 50mS to detect and activate the shutter.

I tried a photo-resistor but it was too slow. A photo-diode worked perfect. Essentially, the output from the diode is fed through an amp and into an analog pin on the MCU. The MCU watches for a spike in the analog readings and triggers the shutter.

Next step is to go from the prototype board to a final, finished version in an enclosure.


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adbsgicom

jecottrell wrote:

Thanks guys.

Next step is to go from the prototype board to a final, finished version in an enclosure.


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Let us know. You might have a side-business...

Sexy6Chick

Wow, those are awesome. A friend of ours in Tucson sent me some pictures last week of some crazy lightnings shots. I am jealous. No lightning shows like that in Chandler lately.

summerz

Excellent, now I'm going to hide lol.