2nd lightning strike.

There was a wonderful storm again tonight, not much moisture but a good deal of electric activity. I set up the tripod, camera and cell phone and became bummed out by the high number of really good strikes that the camera was missing.

I got online and looked at lightning sensors again. They all get mixed reviews on Amazon. It's discouraging. 

I read Arizona Highways that always has a lot of lightning photos each issue, online I looked for which sensor is best. Turns out the most expensive is recommended by photographers. The author wrote he went through several in the $100.00 range before finally buying a good one, so save money by not bothering with those less expensive. He recommended saving up and getting an expensive one, but he did not recommend a a specific model. The expensive ones do other things that I don't care about. 

He did make recommendations about camera settings but he offered so much information it became a wash of confusing numbers and ultimately not for me without studying them. He offered different settings for day and for night. I did learn to make sure the focus is not set to automatic. I knew that. I checked mine and saw in my haste that I had it on automatic. That is, focus the camera and lock it, then use whatever settings suits you. So I changed a few settings on my camera. The whole effort was discouraging.

Then I checked out B&O camera for sensors specific to my model Nikon. Discouraged again because the sensor recommended is among the cheap kind. I'm back to square one with nothing solid to go by. Disgusted with the project tonight I took down the setup thinking all those shutter activations are wasted that nothing can be done with them, shoved the memory card into the slot in the laptop and looked at the set of images in Adobe bridge expecting nothing. 

Oh joy. It caught something. 

Honestly, I don't know why it missed so many great strikes, and close ones too, except possibly not being locked on focus. But there you go. Sometimes the camera's own infrared sensor catches the lightning and most the time it does not. 

And see, this proves that everyday I can learn something new that's important to me. If only I understood what I learned.