Boone Night Sky

One of the things that us techy guys seem to love is electricity. This shot shows nature's most impressive electrical shot in the form of a burst of lightning. I took this shot with a fairly old Sony digital camera, and yes, with a new SLR I would've gotten much better results.

There are two important factors to catching a shot like this on your own: a long shutter speed and patience. I personally took about 30 different shots before I nailed this one, each taking 8 seconds of capture. There can be no movement while the shutter is open, so I had the camera setup on a window sill to keep it still.

With a decent camera you can have a lot of fun trying to catch nature in the act. If you are going to be shopping for a new camera any time soon, remember that most of us have no need for more than about 5 megapixels. This camera was actually a 3 megapixel model, which has always had enough quality for me. Of course, I don't print images out very often, but a 4"x6" printout would probably look great. For 8"x10" prints, you will need atleast 8 megapixels.