Chase The Storms

Late summer provides us with awesome photo opportunities. Booming thunderstorms give us wild light and incredible skies, while strong winds twist tree limbs and towering fair-weather cumulus clouds offer dramatic subject matter. Stormy conditions change rapidly, though, and the right gear can help you deal with them.

Garmin Oregon 550t

Non-photo items include rain gear and insect repellent to keep you dry and comfortable in field conditions. A weather radio provides the latest storm updates and helps you find storms and avoid flash floods. Water (or a favorite hydrating beverage) and snacks for the trail are necessities. Bring your cell phone and let someone know where you’ll be if you’re trekking alone. And it’s always a good idea to have a portable hiker’s first-aid kit stuffed into your camera bag.

ewa-marine U-BF100

GPS
A GPS unit can help you keep track of where you are, how to get back from there when you’re done shooting (assuming you had to travel off-road, either in your vehicle or on foot) and even geotag your images with location data. A standard handheld GPS is best for navigation; there are a number of geotagging systems available for that purpose.

Kata GDC Elements Cover

Camera Protection
Summer storms mean brief, but heavy rains. It’s best to shoot from a protected area, but it doesn’t hurt to provide weather protection for your camera. All-out underwater housings aren’t needed, but relatively inexpensive items like the ewa-marine Rain Cape, OP/TECH Rain Sleeve and Kata GDC Elements Cover provide good rain protection.

Marshall V-LCD70XP-HDMI

Field Monitor
It can be difficult to see the image on a DSLR LCD monitor during Live-View operation outdoors. An external unit such as the Marshall seven-inch Portable Field Monitor provides a larger, easier-to-see image, handy for composing and manually focusing in Live-View mode.

You also can use the Hoodman HoodLoupe, which fits over the LCD monitor, cutting out the ambient glare and providing a magnifying eyepiece for easier manual focusing. Or take a cue from large-format photographers and drape a dark cloth over the camera body and yourself to help you see the monitor image better.

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Stepping Stone Lightning Trigger

Lightning Trigger
While it would be nice to have a device that caused lightning to fire on cue, a lightning trigger actually doesn’t affect the lightning. But it does something almost as good: It fires your camera when lightning occurs. At night, you can open the camera shutter and just wait for a strike (although that’s kind of hit-or-miss), but during the day, there’s too much light to keep the shutter open for minutes at a time (not to mention the draw on the camera battery). With the Lightning Trigger from Stepping Stone Products, you don’t have to keep the shutter open; the camera automatically fires when lightning occurs, day or night. (The Lightning Trigger also can fire your camera when it detects a burst from an electronic flash unit, or even fireworks.)

Tamrac Evolution 8 With Rain Cover; Tamrac Evolution 8

Camera Bags
If you’re working from your car, you can keep your gear there. If you’re hiking to a location, you’ll want a convenient photo backpack with a rain cover to protect your gear. A bag or case is a good way to keep your gear organized in your car, too.

Giottos Lefoto LF5203; Kata 3N1-22

If your photo backpack isn’t waterproof, you can keep it in a “dry bag.” Dry bags, popular with kayakers and rafters to keep their gear safe, are sealable waterproof sacks sold at outdoors- and sporting-goods stores.

Camera Support
A metal tripod makes a perfect lightning rod, so isn’t the best choice for a summer-storm camera support outdoors. A bean-bag support contains minimal metal (either none at all or just a camera-mounting screw) and lets you put the camera almost anywhere—including spots a tripod won’t fit. Of course, the camera itself contains metal parts, so it’s always wise to stay a safe distance from the storm (see the “Lightning Strikes!” sidebar).

Novoflex Bean Bag; Joby Gorillapod Focus; The POD

Artificial Light For Nearby Subjects
A flash unit like the Nissin Di866 can provide pleasant fill light for nearby subjects in your summer-storm shots. All DSLR manufacturers and several other companies make shoe-mount flash units. If you’re doing videos with an HD DSLR, you might find the Litepanels MicroPro Hybrid or Flashpoint FPVL112 handy; the MicroPro Hybrid serves as a flash unit for still photos and can provide continuous light output for videos.

Flashpoint FPVL112; Litepanels MicroPro Hybrid; Nissin Di866

The key to using flash for outdoor photos is subtlety: You just want the flash to lighten shadows and maybe add a catchlight to an animal’s eye. You don’t want the photo to look flash-lit. Most newer DSLRs allow you to adjust the flash-to-ambient light ratio; experiment with different settings, starting with -1 for the flash compensation.

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Pocket Wizard MultiMAX

Tamrac MicroSync Digital

Remote Control
A remote control allows you to fire your camera without touching it. This helps you get sharper images because you won’t jiggle the camera as you trip the shutter. And it makes it safer to do lightning shots, since it allows you to move away from the camera. A wireless remote (radio or infrared) is better than a cable remote because it lets you operate the camera from farther away—even from the protection of your car.

Kinetronics Digital Camera Cleaning Kit

Cleaning Gear
The late-summer outdoor environment is tough on camera gear, what with wind, dust, water and the like. So you should have some gear on hand to clean your camera, lenses and other items as soon as possible after you’re done shooting. Handy cleaning kits are available from a number of sources, containing the tools needed to keep your camera and lenses in top shape.

Giottos Rocket Air Blower

To minimize dust on your camera’s image sensor assembly, it’s best to change lenses in a protected area, such as a tent or your car (or the motel before heading out to the field). A zoom lens can help minimize lens changes in the field. And DSLRs with built-in sensor cleaning features are a big help, too. If your sensor does need cleaning, clean it in a safe area—never try to clean the sensor in windy outdoor conditions.

Filters
That old standby, the polarizing filter, really can add snap to storm photos. By blocking polarized light waves, it can darken the blue sky so white clouds stand out dramatically. If you’re shooting in black-and-white, you can use a polarizer or a red filter to darken blue skies, but in color, the polarizer is the only option.

Polarizers come in two varieties: circular and linear. If you use an SLR with through-the-lens metering and auto-focusing, you’ll want the circular type because the linear type will interfere with metering and AF operation.

Two other filters that can be especially useful for late-summer shooting are the graduated neutral-density filter and the clear lens-protection filter. The grad ND can cut down sky brightness so you can hold detail in both a dark foreground and bright clouds. The clear protection filter can shield the front element of your lens from blowing rain and dust. Be sure to keep both faces of each filter clean and dust-free.