The other week I noticed a bunch of lightning happenin’ right here in San Francisco right by my window. Of course, I wanted to take some photos with my Canon 7D DSLR camera but the problem was how I would time it correctly to actually take the photo right when lightning strikes.
For those of you amateurs and pro photographers who want to take lightning well, you might want to learn how to build your own lightning detection trigger. This in my humble opinion would be the best way to take lightning photos without waiting it for it all your life.
By clicking once the Mode button the device is armed and waiting for the lightning. This is signalled by lighting up the Meter LED. At the same time the camera enters metering mode (the equivalent of pressing the exposure release button half way).
When the device senses a sudden change of ambient light it lights up the Trigger LED for a while and sends the exposure release signal to the camera synchronously (the equivalent of pressing the exposure release button all the way).
For proper operation the camera’s autofocus feature should be disabled and a suitable long exposure time should be set.
