That’s a question, don’t expect a tutorial!
You don’t know when it’s coming. By the time you find your gear it’s gone. If it hasn’t in fact gone you then need to guesstimate some camera settings. You try them and when you think you have the right ones … it’s gone.
OK, it’s not gone. Where will the next flash be?
The whole sky was going off last night so I tried a wide angle lens. I got the whole storm in the frame. Actually I got the whole storm in the bottom millimeter of the frame. A fifty millimeter lens maybe. None in my bag. 70 to 200 then. Where to point it now. Mostly the wrong place.
I never have had much success with lightning. My worst effort was when I lived in the Victorian Goldfields. I dashed out chasing a storm and a half decent composition. Got nothing except soaking wet and got home to find my step daughter had a nice series of shots taken on her phone off the back verandah. Such humiliation.
The best lightning bolt (of about 200 photos) was in a shot that had half a good flash hanging off the left side of the frame and a better half flash hanging off the right side. Black sky in the middle, oh, what could have been. One or two other frames were passable. After careful consideration I decided not to slash my wrists. Instead I took the right side of the frame and moved it to the left. Flipped a copy horizontally and moved the two halves together. I did this in Affinity Photo.
bobmcgee 