Riding The Storm Out

Storm in Texas — Not quite a Texas Flood

We'd been dodging storms all afternoon. Through Oklahoma, then into Texas. It was relatively clear at Amarillo's Big Texan RV Park, but there were storm clouds on the horizon when we drove into New Mexico the next morning. We were staying in Sumner Lake State Park, about an hour round trip from the town of Fort Sumner, where one good restaurant was located. Instead of driving out to the park first to find our campsite, we ate a tasty big lunch at Esther's Family Diner in Fort Sumner, then drove out to Pecos Campground and our site in the park.

Site Trouble - Walking Into The Sunset

There was a little trouble with the site - the 30A electric socket in the pedestal was upside down, and our surge suppressor kept falling out of it. Only one other site out of 12 was occupied, so we called a park ranger and Reserve America to resolve the problem. It turned out Reserve America couldn't change our site on the same day, and the ranger couldn't help either. The only possible solution was to take a first come first served site that couldn't be reserved out from under us, so that's what we did.

We took a walk down to the lake just before sunset. Overhead, the skies were calm, but we could see a storm front moving in from the north. I shot great horizon cloudscapes as the sun went down. I grabbed my tripod and set up for long exposures. Then the real show began.

Lightning Under The Stars

The first thing you notice is the clouds lighting up. You see a landscape lit by their veiled light on the horizon, with jagged cloud edges and huge, heavy fluff balls just waiting to dump their rain. The stars look down over everything, with a finger of the Milky Way poking up. Suddenly there’s a mix of flickering horizontal lightning and slashing downward strikes, followed by a furious firestorm of strikes at the horizon - down to the ground, cloud to cloud, in random positions. There was still enough light on nearby power poles and adobe shelters to let you pick them out. My wife took our dogs into our RV at some point, and watched the show from a window. I stayed outside and kept shooting.

As it got later, stars popped out. The storm clouds forced them to make selective appearances, but there they were. I'm always amazed by different star colors you don't see until you look at the pictures later - red, blue, white, orange.

Change It Up

A 35mm lens limits the view of the sky, so I switched to a much wider 21mm. The tradeoff is the smaller size of the lightning strikes, but I wanted to get lightning and more stars in the frame together. There was still some reflected orange color on the eastern horizon to light up the clouds over there.

Disappearing Stars - Storm’s Coming

I got caught up in the light show, and deepening darkness made it hard to see anything but lightning in the LCD screen. I didn't notice the disappearing stars. I felt untouched by what seemed like an unmoving distant storm. Then the wind picked up, and I could smell the approaching downpour. So I collapsed the tripod legs and hurried to our RV. As I closed the door, the rain started an insistent tapping on the roof, and thunder cracked overhead. I'd made it inside just in time.

Shot Notes

I usually pack up the Leica M11 ahead of rainy weather, since no M-mount lenses are weathersealed. But the M11's 60MP resolution was much better and its high ISO noise much lower than the OM System OM-1 camera I also had on this trip.

I used a lightweight Gitzo GT1545T tripod with a RRS BH-30 ballhead. The combination weighs just over 3 pounds, but it's plenty stable with the center column down.

I could have shot everything with two lenses, Leica's 35mm f/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE II and an older Leitz 21mm f/2.8 Elmarit-M designed in 1980. That 35mm lens renders very sharply in the way only a lens with aspherical elements can. The 21mm f/2.8 is small and light, yet has reasonably sharp rendering across the frame if it's stopped down to f/5.6-8. Most of my shots were at f/4-f/8 at ISO 200-400 (a few as it got darker at ISO 800-1600) with as much light as the lightning gave me.

I wish I'd used a 50mm lens for some lightning landscape closeups, but I'd prepared for wide field astrophotography, not a localized thunderstorm. And I decided to just go with what I had, weather and equipment.

Setting the M11 for long exposures in the 10-20 second range is a bit complicated. You first set the camera for B (bulb), then hit the menu button, navigate to exposure time with the D-pad (4-way directional pad), select it with the D-pad's center button, and turn the rear thumbwheel to choose exposure time. (You can also tap the exposure time on the touchscreen, and slide your finger to adjust it.) The maximum time you can set depends on ISO, with a maximum 60s at 6400 ISO, 120s at 3200 ISO, and so upwards. The longest time you can set at ISO 200 is 30 minutes. I was nowhere near that, so this wasn't a problem.

I wasn't using my Reveni Labs wireless shutter trigger, so I set the camera for a 2-second delay to allow vibrations from my finger pressing the button to die away before the shutter opened.

I adjusted white balance and tweaked exposures in parts of scenes. I also enhanced contrast in selected areas by adjusting black and white levels, highlights, clarity and haze reduction values. The suggestions in an old Adobe post helped with some adjustments. Bringing out stars and cloud detail in post processing is definitely an art.

More Information

nikunj.m (April 01, 2020), How to edit night sky images using Lightroom. Retrieved from https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/how-to-edit-night-sky-images-using-lightroom/m-p/11042789

Reveni Labs (nd), Remote Mechanical Shutter Release. Retrieved from https://www.reveni-labs.com/shop/p/remote-control-mechanical-shutter-release Next time I'll use it...