Wild-Weather.com

Landed in Tucson last night with lightning striking the ground to the south. The forecast for the next few days is pretty wild. There should be lots of opportunities for some great lightning shots. When I got to my hotel my Convergent Design NanoFlash was waiting for me. This little box will be great for this shoot as it has a pre record function that records the 4 seconds or so prior to pressing the record button. By using that I will be able to set the camera up facing the storm and as soon as I see a lightning bolt I can press record and instead of filling up the cards with hours of junk all I’ll have is short clips each containing a lightning bolt! I have a PDW-700 and an EX1 with me and I’ll be using the NanoFlash with both. I’m looking forward to seeing lightning at 100Mb/s. Lightning is quite challenging for any codec due to it’s very short transient nature. The XDCAM codecs have always done a good job, but Im expecting something special from the NanoFlash.

The plan for today is to head out to the west of Tucson this afternoon, maybe to Kitt Peak to catch the storms as soon as they get going. I’ll post later and get some frame grabs or clips online as soon as I can.

I’m off to Arizona on Thursday for a long weekend to shoot the monsoon thunderstorms. I had postponed this trip from earlier in the month when the weather just wasn’t right. This tim around the forecast is really good (for storms that is). I will be shooting with my PDW-700 and my EX1. I will also be giving the Nanoflash a shake down making good use of the cache function to capture what I hope will be some great lightning storms.
Anyone want to join me? I have a couple of spare seats in the car and motel rooms are peanuts.

Lots of thunderstorms in the UK today. There was even a nice storm with a shelf cloud that passed through Bracknell, but nothing that even comes close to the kind of storms I like to chase. Next week I’m off to Arizona to samle the monsoon thunderstorms and the spectacular lightning they produce. There is one space left on the tour if anyone fancies a dramatic last minute break!