Tripods in lightning storms?

[Willie]

When photographing storms with lightning hitting is it any safer using a Wood tripod or Carbon Fiber over a Metal one?

I photograph as the storms move in - but generally from in an enclosed vehicle - trying to stay safer while still getting some lightning images.

For the times I am out of the vehicle does it make any real difference what the tripod is made of?

[Two23]

Doubtful it makes much difference. Air is a good insulator and ligthtning goes through thousands of feet of it.


Kent in SD

[Louie Powell]

My first response is to ask why you raise this question? If you are seriously considering going out into a lightning storm with a camera and tripod, my answer would be 'Don't do it!'.

But if you are asking the question just out of curiosity, then my response would be different. Lightning obeys the usual laws of electrical physics, but what happens during a lightning stroke sometimes appears unexpected because unexpected and seemingly trivial factors can become part of the electrical circuit. The general rule is that strokes will be attracted to the point of highest elevation, and unless the photographer is unusually short, or the tripod is unusually tall, that point would be the top of the photographer's head. But if the photographer is wearing shoes that are good insulators, then a conductive tripod might be a more likely target. But one can also devise scenarios where the electrical circuit comprising the photographer's body in parallel with an adjacent tripod present a greater exposure than either standing alone.

While speculation about these scenarios is intellectually interesting, common sense says that they are not something that you want to experiment with. So the best advice for photographing lightning is to do it from a distance and from within a shelter.

Ultimately, lightning is an electrostatic discharge - trapped electrical charge accumulates in one area to the point where a dielectric breaks down to allow that charge to be transferred to another area. That breakdown and transfer is what we see as a lightning stroke. Statistically, most strokes involve discharges between clouds, but the most interesting and visually dramatic are earth-cloud discharges. Earth-cloud discharges are usually the most dangerous when people are in the vicinity of the point of attachment, but cloud-cloud discharges can cause damage to structures on the ground and possible danger to humans.

[Tin Can]

3 timer Lee Trevino and many golfers

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/how-a-trio-of-tour-pros-learne

[Robert Bowring]

If you get hit by lightning it will not make any difference what your tripod is made of.

[Vaughn]

I remember reading about a pitcher that got killed by lightning and the rest of the infield got knocked on their asses.

I am 6'3" of conductive tissues linked together by a slightly salted watery solution -- a metal tripod shorter than I am standing next to me will not make a lot of difference. I have seen lots of interesting after-effects of lightning strikes in the wilds.

[Drew Wiley]

I've been in many many severe lightning storms in the mountains. The secret to survival is to move FAST to the safest location, generally downhill, and don't have anything conductive nearby. Don't have metal around you period. Of course, if you're way out in the middle of a lake in an aluminum boat, you need luck too. If you start smelling ozone, have the hair raise on your arms, and there's a buzz in the air, you probably have less than a minute. Sometimes there's St Elmo's Fire, a strange iridescent glow around metal. If you see that, it might be the last thing you ever see.
Every year people die from lightning strikes in our mountains. My nephew once climbed Mt Whitney up the climber's route. There were a number of people who had come up the trail standing around the summit hut. A tiny black cloud arose over the next ridge a few miles away. He yelled at them to get off the summit as fast as possible. They ignored him. He and his climbing buddies ran down the trail, ready to toss their metal climbing gear over the cliff if it started glowing. About the second switchback down, they paused to look back up. The sky was black. People had gone into the summit hut instead of downhill. One of them was instantly killed by a lightning bolt. Another was revived using CPR. A third person had his arm literally microwaved in that hut, and had to have it amputated.
I could tell many stories of my own about lightning victims I've seen. Once a dozen Boy Scouts were killed crossing a bare patch of granite at the same time. Quite a few people over the years have died atop Half Dome in Yosemite by ignoring the sign warning them not to go up during a storm. Even if you survive, you might have severe burns. There's a special term for anyone who gambles with lightning : they're called a Fool.
If you want to photograph lightning, don't do it out in the wide open with a big storm cell above. In the mountains, don't be similarly exposed on a bare area or near the prow of a hill, and especially not atop a peak or pass. Look around you, are the trees unscathed, or are there burn scars on them? Lightning is fairly predictable where it strikes in the mountains. You always want to photograph from a sheltered vantage point.

[Kiwi7475]

Taking shots of lighting is something I will definitely use my 35mm gear for. I’ll bring the 200-500mm zoom and do it from a safer distance (nothing is 100% safe). They also sell you this trigger detectors so that you can catch them, like

https://www.photographytalk.com/landscape-photography/8591-how-to-photograph-lightning-lightning-activated-shutter-release-buying-guide


Definitely don’t want be shooting close-up lightning with my 4x5 and a 65mm lens ;-)

[Vaughn]

That is what was nice working in the Yolla Bollys -- I never had to see someone hit by lightening...not enough people around. Sitting in a FS truck on top of a mountain during lightening storms (the lookout itself was condemned) was 'fun'. I would have loved playing with the fire-finder in the lookout, but instead I had to get the smokes' located from maps. Not tough if you like maps and familiar with the 360 degree view...and I like maps.

But I have had to hold back crew members who wanted to run back to camp when a storm hit...much safer where we were than running along a ridgetop for three miles. And sometimes one has no choice but to hunker down when one has white-out conditions with the buzz and then lightening, and there is no way to go up or down.

[Drew Wiley]

Most LF lightning photography is done on a time exposure random luck basis. My luck has never been that good. A few years ago I was set up at a spot in the Ruby Mtns of Nevada where, all at the same time, there was a phenomenal sunset one direction, a gigantic thunderstorm beside that, actually below us above the valley, and behind us, the Perseid meteor shower. I bagged a couple of so-so sunset shots, but my friend videoed 3 hours of 180 degree view. The day before it was one of those incidents under a sunny blue sky when as soon as we poked our noses over the top of a pass, there was a gigantic wall of black coming at us at about 30 mph. No time to pull out any kind of camera. Just about 7 min retreating fast from the top lightning was hitting all around it, and by the time we got to the cover of a few trees a few hundred yards downhill to put on raingear, we were already drenched. That lightning storm went on about another 8 hrs.

[Greg]

Too many close calls with lightning on this end. When I was about 8, a friend and I were walking up our road to get home. Bolt struck the road in front of us. Never heard a rumble of thunder, only sensed that something had just happened. Have seen trees closer than 100 feet to me struck by lightning... The trees were no match for those bolts of lightning. One time I was rock climbing with a friend. As I was seconding the climb, A storm closed in within seconds and a bolt hit the ground beneath us. My partner told me that he had never seen me climb so fast up the cliff to finish the climb. When we both were at the top, we saw St Elmo's Fire. Threw our metal climbing gear onto the ground and ran for a ditch. Ironically not another bolt of lightning happened and the storm was over in about a minute. On a commercial party boat in Chesapeake Bay three of us were on the top deck when a thunderstorm blew in. Our hair stood on end and we nearly dove into the stairwell. I have photographed lightning before but the covered camera was on a tripod and I was in my car. Released the shutter with a wireless control. One time a bolt bounced off the back of the car. About 15 years ago saw first hand the bodies of 2 people who were struck and killed by lightning. The were part of a group of people sheltering under an opened sided shelter on a golf course. Rest of the group were completely unharmed. So it's been my experience that lightning is completely unpredictable. My way of having the camera on a tripod about 40 feet away from me sheltering in a car is the only way to go, but haven't done that in more than 20 years.

[Drew Wiley]

One trip into the Wind River Range, I encountered four guys all dazed and wild-eyed, leaning against a rock, with their hair sticking out. They had been climbing Pingora when a storm came in, so they started rappelling back down. But it was raining too, making their ropes a partial conductor. Well, given how climbing harnesses are worn, it doesn't take too much imagination to figure out where they got tingled.

[tuco]

If the metal tripod has rubber caps on the legs, perhaps no difference. But it's all theoretical at this scale, I'd think. Just standing taller than your tripod could be the path of least resistance for mother nature.

[seall]

Lightining is so unpredictable, it does not always strike the highest point and using "safe" non-conducting materials is not always a viable solution if there is a sudden downpour.

If you are going to be loading and unloading film from a camera then I think a safer way is to have your camera and tripod set up in a vehicle that protects you as an improvised Faraday cage. Else set up your camera with a remote wireless trigger and control it from your vehicle.

[MrFujicaman]

Okay, I just checked my carbon fiber tripod with a continuity tester-yup, it's conductive! Think the OP needs to price wooden tripods...

[reddesert]

Lightning can do weird things, the potentials are so high that it will jump across objects that are insulators under "normal" voltages. (Rubber caps on tripod feet or rubber soled shoes are no protection against lightning.) However anything that's conductive provides a path for current to flow. We think of lightning as a cloud to ground strike, but during the strike, an upward leader propagates from points on the ground, and a conductive object may be a point for that to initiate.

I heard a story of climbers high up hearing a buzzing or feeling a tingling from their ice axe when an electrical storm is imminent and tossing the axe away as they frantically descended.

I would certainly not want to be standing next to a metal object connected to the ground, but it's not like a CF or wood tripod would be "safe," especially when wet. The safest gear would be something you can evacuate quickly, well before things get hairy, and get in the car.

[Kevin Crisp]

I know, I mean I knew, a guy who protected himself from a light rain by holding an aluminum clipboard over his head. Don't risk it.

[Drew Wiley]

Getting in the car ain't so easy when it's a week walk away. The best strategy is not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Out on the plains might be one thing, but up in the mountains lightning does tend to behave predictably. In many western states, summer lightning storms are primarily afternoon events, and sometimes extend well into the night. Start early and plan summits and pass crossings well ahead of cloud buildup, because things can change remarkably fast after that. Avoid crossing long bare areas in a storm, especially if there are evident signs of past lightning activity there, like stunted burned trees; don't camp in those kinds of areas. Another common mistake is people taking shelter in natural caves or alcoves on mountain faces. Those are often related to big joints or fissure in the geology which tend to conduct electricity, or like the stone huts atop certain popular summits I described earlier, especially collect charged ions. They can become natural microwave ovens.
When I was a kid, one summer I worked at a pack station, which was at 8000 ft. But its water tank was 2000 ft higher connected by galvanized pipe. The owner's wife was in the little kitchen washing dishes during a storm way up on the ridge. She momentarily stepped into the next room when a lightning bolt hit the water tank uphill, and the whole darn sink area exploded and destroyed the whole kitchen. Close call.

[Vaughn]

Kinda of the same thing happened to my ex-wife in Australia growing up. Probably close to the same length of pipe, just not as much elevation difference. Gave her and the cow she was milking a good shock. I was there in 1987 and was developing 4x5's in their old house. Had to take a break around mid-night...dang lightning was threatening to fog my film (open trays, minimal window covering normally needed that far out). Not hooked up to the water pipes. I used milk filters to filter out the larvae, etc from the rainwater tank.

[Drew Wiley]

I'll have to try that - round up some caterpillars around the yard, put them in a bug popper to simulate the lightning, and then grind them up into the developer, along with some unpasteurized milk. You should have never let out your trade secret!