Lightning Storm

X Play, f2.0, 1/15, ISO 1600, JPG

The saying goes the best camera is the one you have with you but sometimes it's great to have a backup camera with you just in case.

There was a lightning storm over Hue tonight, not wanting to miss out on some good photo opportunities I took my Ricoh GR with me to the Huong river to take some long exposure photos.

Not being a fan of carrying much gear or big cameras the Ricoh GR is the ideal camera to take along for any kind of photography. It is versatile thanks to the 28mm f2.8 lens, has great image quality and fits in a jeans pocket.

Not having a tripod with me means I always need to find a ledge or something stable to place the camera on. Lucky for me there was a place to sit down and place the camera on with a good view over the river and the bridge.

I set the GR up in full manual mode for long exposures and used the timer to avoid any camera shake, I experimented with different exposure times but found that 8 seconds yielded the best results.

Lightning might never strike twice in the same place but tonight, it did strike 4-5 times in exactly the same place and my GR was recording this as it happened.

This might have been the best photo of my outing tonight but just as the GR was busy recording this long exposure shot of the lightning strikes, I looked behind me and saw a guy sitting on his cyclo watching the lightning storm.

I liked the light and the way he was sitting and wanted to take a photo. My GR still busy with my long exposure shot meant that I had to resort to using my Motorola X Play phone to take the photo.

Sure, the quality of the phone camera is not very good, especially in low light but I figured it will be better than no photo. Sometimes getting a photo is more important that the technical quality.

Just as I was about to take the photo of the guy, a very close lightning strike just behind him illuminated the sky purple and provided a great backdrop. This made the phone photo my favorite photo of the evening and it shows that it's good to always be prepared and have a backup camera around.

Speaking of lightning or more accurately 'Light', I recently came across the Light camera and think it looks very promising and has some interesting ideas behind it. It's good to see something fresh in photography. It could prove to be an excellent backup camera to have on me and since it is weatherproof, it should survive a lightning storm and some rain without any problems.

Hopefully I will get to try the camera out and get a better idea of what it can do and how it works.

GR, f8.0, 8 sec., ISO 100, RAW