I recently got an Olympus D-220L (an EXCELLENT camera I might add) which is my first digital camera, and my first introduction to photography as a hobby for that matter. I've already done a number of panoramas and am playing around with the manual exposure settings to make some interesting effects.

Anyhow, a few nights ago there was a terrific thunderstorm that passed over my house...thunder, lightning, very heavy rains, it was great. I thought it might be interesting to try my hand at photographing some of the lightning. However, I quickly found out that the 1-2 second lag between pressing the shutter release button and having the picture captured is ridiculously slow for catching action shots such as lightning.

I was wondering, has anyone else tried action photography with any success? During the storm I wound up trying to approximate how often the lightning struck, then just taking pictures hoping to get something, but that also is very inaccurate. Then even if I could capture a lightning strike, it would probably be overexposed and I don't think there is any way to manually lock in the exposure settings.

Thanks for the advice, James

-- James Hilliard (jrh@cedar-rapids.net), February 28, 1999

Answers

You might be interested in Canon Powershot Pro 70, it is a real professional camera and I do believe you will be able to do what you want & more. I will buy one soon.

-- Fred (tabarrok@ariver.com), March 05, 1999.

James- While this may not be enough to help get catch the lightning ("fast as lightning" *does* have some meaning), you can usually greatly reduce the shutter-lag delay with a digicam by half-pressing the shutter release button before the actual exposure itself. This gets any autofocus and autoexposure calculations out of the way, and can reduce the final release time to as little as 0.2 seconds or so.

Again, this won't help you with the D-220L (which I also agree is an excellent camera - possibly the best image quality of any 640x480 we've tested), Casio has a cute trick with some of their models, called "Past recording." The basic idea is that you put the camera in this mode, and it starts continuously grabbing frames, about every 0.2 seconds, storing 4 or 5 of them in memory at all times. Then, whenever you press the shutter button, it stops, and saves the last 4 or 5 shots to the memory card. Thus, it grabs a picture of what *just* happened whenever you trip the shutter!

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), March 05, 1999.

This is a question I am trying to find an answer to also. I have been photographing lighning and severe weather for over 10 years. The cost of developing whole rolls of film for one good lightning shot is getting old. To try and snap off a picture the second a bolt appears is nearly impossible. You obviously need a time exposure greater than 4 seconds or a bulb setting. Problem.... Very few digitals offer a bulb setting, and I've also heard they cannot take a lightning photograph properly anyway. If anyone knows of a digital camera that is capable of taking good lighning shots, please e-mail me. Thanks.

-- Jason (vortes2@msn.com), November 20, 2000.