First attempt at lightning photography

Recently, we had a rare lightning storm pass through the town of Forest Grove, Oregon and I thought it would be a good opportunity to make my first attempt at capturing it while using a local wetlands as the foreground.

EXIF:
Shutter Speed 6.0 seconds
F-Stop: F/8.0
Focal Length: 19.0 mm

I used a Canon 5D with the 17-40L lense for this shoot. It was on a tripod using a remote shutter release and since it was dusk and the lighting was changing by the minute it was anywhere between F5 and F8.

Using Bulb mode the exposure settings were anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds long as I manually held and released the shutter accordingly



EXIF:
Shutter Speed 15 seconds
F-Stop: F/5.6
Focal Length: 17.0 mm