Lightning picture shot with iPhone

[Norwegian Pilot]

Today I experienced something incredible that I wanted to share with you:

Watching thunderstorms building up over land is a fascination of mine, especially since it's related to my profession. Due to very unstable air masses here today, huge cumulonimbus clouds were building and passing through my area, and I took about 10 minutes of my time watching them. There were some blinking of lightning about every minute or so, but the visible bolts of lightning were even rarer.
I decided to take a chance for some reason, and pulled up my iPhone. I held down the "take photo" button, and released it trying to "catch" a light of some sort, maybe a blinking cloud. As soon as my fifth try, I could see the clouds blinking in the background while releasing the button. I could not have imagined the result I was about to see on my iPhone screen:

Lightning picture shot with iPhone

The average peak power output of a single lightning stroke is about one trillion watts — one "terawatt" (1012 W), and the stroke lasts for about 30 millionths of a second — 30 "microseconds".

Wikipedia

 

[UngratefulNinja]

Nice shot!! I have attempted lightning shots a couple of times without success.

 

[dom91932]

That is a very good picture and especially that it was taken with an iPhone.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Great picture!

 

[TheAppleGeek]

Great shot!

 

[SkyBell]

Good shot. It's amazing that even the human eye can detect something that fast, much less an iPhone.

 

[elephunkman]

Sweet shot!

 

[sniffies]

Is one trillion watts a lot? Please, forgive my ignorance; I've never been good at biology.

 

[Leet Apple]

You should contact Steve, he might use your story in the next keynote about the camera

 

[troop231]

You should contact Steve, he might use your story in the next keynote about the camera

lawl +1

 

[cobie454]

excellent shot especially with an iPhone camera

 

[elephunkman]

Is one trillion watts a lot? Please, forgive my ignorance; I've never been good at biology.

General lightbulbs are about 80 watts. Watts is the unit of power for energy. A trillion? Bam!

 

[Fabienne]

I almost got hit by lightening once. Humbling experience. You did a nice shot there, Norwegian Pilot! Captured the spirit of it, too!

 

[azsprty]

Great picture man

 

[spillproof]

ohhhh awwwww



Awesome shot!

 

[senorhappy]

"The average peak power output of a single lightning stroke is about one trillion watts — one "terawatt" (1012 W), and the stroke lasts for about 30 millionths of a second — 30 "microseconds".

Not true.... According to Doc Brown in Back to the Future a lightning bolt contains 1.21 Jiggawatts of power. If you had your DeLorean at 88mph when that pic was taken, you could have gone into the future and already have an iPhone G4!

 

[VulchR]

Great shot - I didn't know the iPhone's camera could produce a 1600*1200 pixel image.

 

[saccento]

nice shot dude

 

[mackmgg]

Nice shot! I'm hoping to get some of these shots with my high speed camera once lightning season starts again

 

[spectre51]

Amazing shot especially considering how slow the shutter speed is on the iPhone.

 

[eng42ine]

Is one trillion watts a lot? Please, forgive my ignorance; I've never been good at biology.

...wat

To OP: Great shot with the phone

 

[Neil1138]

59,9.01N
10,13.39E

Now your screen name makes sense

 

[Norwegian Pilot]

Hehe, yeah, I don't just write random countries in my screen name.

Thank you for the comments. Considering the shutter speed on the iPhone, I'm still quite amazed of the luck I was having. I bet i could try a hundred times on the next passing storm cell and still miss.