So today I was going to have a post for you all about Xmas trees and link to a heap of cute stuff on Pinterest but last night we had a wicked thunderstorm and instead of writing that post (and getting lost in Pinterest for a couple of hours) I spent a couple of hours trying to photograph lightning!
Now I don’t own a dslr or any fancy camera equipment. I have a Sony quick shot point and shoot and my iPhone. The Sony has absconded most likely into miss K’s bedroom as, even at not-quite-3 she loves taking photos and will often steal the Sony or just run round taking pics on her iPhone (yes she has an iPhone – it’s basically an iPod touch now as the antenna is bung and it has no sim). But I digress.
So I was left with my phone. Now the iPhone4s has a pretty decent camera for a phone and I tried to get some still shots just using the camera but alas I’m to slow.
Switch to camera mode and I managed to capture some awesome claps of thunder and a few bolts of lightning. Sadly most of the really clear bolts happened after I finished shooting
I put a call out on twitter hoping one of the photo types might have an answer to how to get stills from video and while I waited I also did a bit of searching on Google. One app that came up a few times was StillShot (iTunes)
Grabbed it and had a play around and managed to grab these shots out of the first 2 videos I took. A bit blurry but pretty happy with that.
I did some more searching cause I thought well there might be some tips out there on shooting lightning with an iPhone and one of the first things that came up was an app called iLightningCam (iTunes) the only thing I managed to capture with it though was street lights. Next time there is lightning though I’ll be a bit better prepped and will try shooting from somewhere a little different – like undercover outside not inside where I kept getting reflection from the glass.