23:14, f/8, ISO 100, 6 s. One frame out of about ninety.
Every commercial lightning trigger advertises a response time in
microseconds, and every one of them still misses the first return stroke.
The stroke is over before the shutter has finished thinking about it. What
you actually catch is the continuing current and whatever comes after, which
on a good night is most of the light anyway.
I gave up on triggers in the spring and went back to leaving the shutter
open. Six seconds at f/8, ISO 100, over and over, and throw away everything
that is only rain. It is a worse hit rate and a better photograph, because
the frames that work have the whole channel rather than the bright half of
it.
The unglamorous half of this is keeping water off a piece of glass while
standing in the thing that is producing the water. I have tried every hood,
bag and umbrella arrangement sold for it. What finally worked was a length of
drainpipe, cut at an angle, gaffered to the lens barrel.
It looks ridiculous and it costs about four pounds. The commercial rain
covers are all designed for a photographer who is walking about; the problem
here is a camera that sits still for two hours facing into wind.
Three seconds to the kilometre is the rule everyone learns, and it is
close enough. What the rule does not tell you is that the useful number is
not the distance but how it is changing: two counts of eleven and then a
count of six means the cell is coming towards you at a pace worth respecting,
and the tripod can be moved later.
I keep a note of the gaps on my phone now, one line per flash. It has
twice sent me back to the car earlier than I wanted, and once not early
enough.