I think I just saw Noah's Ark....

Hey Readers! If any of you are in the southern Ohio area, you know we where hit with some very substantial storms last night. I love weather... studying weather, watching it roll in, reading Doppler maps and photographing storms and the damage left behind! I actually took a class on storm spotting that is provided by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, often pronounced "Noah"), so that I could join the NOAA SkyWarn Weather Spotters Organization! Basically, as a weather spotter, I can report significant weather information, such as; tornadoes, funnel clouds, high amounts of precipitation, hail larger than 1/2-1" in diameter, ect. After you take the class, you are issued an ID card with a weather spotter ID number along with a phone number in which to call during weather events, for reporting. Though they are very clear, as a spotter, you SHOULD NOT storm chase, they do provide you with some basic safety information and inform you on certain things to know when storm chasing, so that you may be effective and safe!! Here is a link to the SkyWarn website: SkyWarn. The SkyWarn organization is a great supplement to my amateur radio licence, allowing me to be a more of an asset to my community in the event of a disaster or emergency situation effecting many people on a large scale. I also maintain current Red Cross CPR and First Aid cards as well as training from the US Army as a Combat Life Saver (A Battle Field First Responder is the best way to explain it.)

With that said, as the storms rolled in with massive amounts of lightning, and wind, I decided to grab my younger sister Megan's Nikon D40, and tossed in some quick manual setting and took a few pictures. Heres what i took:

Here it comes!

Trying to get the settings dialed in!

Setting where closer, but so was this lightning bolt! (about 25 yards away.. I saw spots for about 5 minutes)

Settings dialed in decently!

(Shooting from inside the house through the window, since it was Megan's camera and I wanted it to stay dry)

Not bad for a D40 with a stock lens shot hand held through a wet window!

Of course, the larger the photo, the easier it is to see the lightning. With a touch of editing, the lighting could be a lot more bold, but I'm not big on editing photos outside of cropping and a little contrast and color adjustments... nothing you couldn't do if you where shooting film. I believe Chris Weeks said it best: "Photographers who rely on Photshop and heavy editing as a form of photography, lack the necessary skills to make the truly great photographers."

As you can see from the photos, it was mainly cloud to cloud lightning which is exciting still, but doesn't make for those fun cloud to ground lightning pictures you see in books. I was impressed with the D40's ability to be set up fairly quickly in Manual Shooting Mode, and the quality of the pictures. My biggest issue with the D40 was processing time. For a 30 second exposure, it took nearly 20 seconds for the camera to process the photo before I could release the shutter for the next shot. My D80 is much faster and the Manual Shooting Mode allows for super fast settings control, but those things are to be expected advances of the D80 over the D40. None the less, the D40 is still a great camera for the amateur photographer! Well, I hope everyone stayed safe over the last couple days through the storms, and I hope you did not sustain any serious damages!

Peace out, Hippies!

Levi