Katie and I went out shooting last night as the storms rolled into south Dallas. We found a perch above Joe Pool Lake, set up the camera and tripod, and snapped a roll before the storms overtook us.

These storms were about 6 miles away, and at the time were dropping 1-1/8 inch hail (larger than golfballs). All I had was Kodak High Definition ISO 400, so I shot with that. After shooting last weekend on a bad roll of Kodak 400, and overexposing all of my lightning shots (30 seconds was way too long for 400!), I tried to learn a bit from that lesson and do better this time.

Most of the shots I took were still overexposed – light levels were fine, but ISO 400 is still just too fast for shooting 15-second exposures, so all of the shots showed a lot of grain. Both of the shots below came out because I caught a bolt mid-exposure and was able to close the shutter. Both of the shots were from a tripod and manual shutter, no remote, . Next time I do this I hope to have a roll of ISO 100 to try out. Again, the scans are bad, and as you can see there is some debris on my scanner. Those blotches are not on the film.

         

As of now, it looks like I am consistantly getting about 2 good shots out of a roll. So, after film and processing, that’s about $5 per good shot. This is yet another hobby that is going to break me if I’m not careful.