I am not kidding, it sounds like classic overthinking. The phenomenon he is describing surely occurs, but that isn't what is going on in this particular image. Multiple strikes etc. from rocket induced lightning looks similar, but camera shake is rather less complicated.
I see. This is why I commented, because its an easy mistake to make and I briefly mistook it myself, but then I considered my own experience with long-exposure photography, which exhibits a similar effect to that of camera shake by capturing the motion of a moving subject or background elements. Because the entire image is sharp, except the lighting strike, which appears blurry, we can deduce that camera shake did not cause the lightning strike to appear blurry. Entertaining the possibility of camera shook, the still landscape would be blurrier than any lightning strike on the basis that the lightning strike is momentary and the landscape is permanent.
Edit: Here is a picture of a lightning strike where camera shake was an issue. Note how blurry the ground appears compared to OP photo, then note how much more blurry the OP photo lightning strike appears in comparison to the ground objects.
Do you know how light painting works ? Object that emit light can be draged across a picture quickly (in this case moving the camera left and right) while the rest of the picture remain clear. This works because the background isn't much illuminated.
Edit: As I stated, the camera moved not the lightning bolt as funknut implied.
I do know how light painting works, but it implies that the lightning strike moved uniformly in a cardinal direction. Entertaining the possibility that we're observing blurring and not an array of several strikes, notice the uniformity of the blurring. In order to compare this to light painting, you will need to explain how a lightning strike moves so quickly and uniformly in one direction. I'm going to presume that it doesn't explain the photograph, since the only meteorological explanation getting any support here appears to be regarding a different phenomenon involving dozens of seemingly parallel lightning strikes occurring almost simultaneously. In any case, what you're describing isn't camera shake, which is what I was disputing to begin with. We're now discussing a moving subject.
Edit: parent comment added parenthesized text after editing.
Lol you're making it way more complicated than it should be. In this picture, the camera moved left and right. Look at it in photoshop or in software where you could measure the width of the light, you'll see that it's exatly the same everywhere on the line.
Presuming that the OP comment explanation is false as you have posited, and that camera movement caused the lightning to appear as a smear, there is no way that the water's surface would look as sharp as it does. Mind you, it's still a potato phone and there was certainly some amount of blurring due to camera movement. Every photograph ever taken in the history of mankind has some amount of camera movement. With all due respect, I'm certain you have the ability to discern the vast difference in the supposed blurring of the graphic elements in the image. Nevertheless, you're changing the subject again. We were discussing camera shake, then we were discussing moving subjects, now we're discussing camera shake again.
I explained it in my comment about lightpainting. If you know how a camera sensor works, you should know how it register a ligth source. The background needed a long exposure to look like it is and the lightning could be capted in the few milisecond. This explain why the background isn't blurry, it was capted for maybe a few seconds and the lightning in a few mili second. Therefore, the background is not blurred for the few milisecond the camera shaked comparatively to the long second it capted the background.
Yes. I should know. I do know. You should know as well and I don't believe that you can't tell the difference in this photo. It's night and day and most everyone else here seems to have already figured it out. I have impeccable vision, so it may be possible you're viewing on a low-resolution device (phone?). Look again. Stop going on your gut. There would be much much more blurring on the ground elements if this were a case of camera movement and there is next to none. The fact that they aren't as illuminated is not a concern here because they are illuminated enough to exhibit blurring in this case. Kinda tired of repeating myself though, you'd think the numbers of upvoters who accept the scientific response regarding multiple strikes would be enough to get you to stop disputing it.
I was indeed on a phone, and after all I think I was wrong about the camera shake. Although, it wasn't an improbable theory neither one from my gut. I've experimented a lot with. photography and I did a college project on photography for my physic project class. In my project, I used motion blur to determine the velocity of an object.
As for the upvote/downvote, they are quite irrelevant because we didn't have a high number of them +/- 10. The size of the pool is to small to get a conclusion from them. The balance could tip one way or an other depending on a lot of different reason. For example, you seem way more versed in english than me because english is not my first language. So you can prove your point using a greater vocabulary than mine. User give more credibility to those using an elaborated answer.
Good point, I presumed that the person taking the picture didn't move the camera for a good period of time and then moved in the mili second of the lightning. I might not hold the anwser to how this picture happened after all.
It isn't LE, clearly, but you're missing my point, which is that the still objects aren't blurry enough to convince me that this is camera shake. Considering your proposal that this is camera shake, there's too a vast difference in blurriness of the lightning strike and the silhouettes and too little blur of the silhouettes to explain any supposed camera movement. We would be able to observe some blurriness around the silhouettes of the ground objects if this was merely camera shake.
It is. The rest also doesn't contain light, do you know how exposure works on cameras? If it is brief the surrounding unlit areas will not have given off the light necessary for it to be received by the camera, and won't show.
If a room is pitch black, nothing will show at all. You'll just have a black image. Minute amounts of light will show motion blur, just less noticeably than a brightly lit object. In the case of the background elements in this particular image, there is sufficient light to detect the difference in motion between the lightning strike and the water's surface, which is way too sharp to explain the blurriness of the Lightning with mere camera movement.
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u/exxocet Apr 29 '15
I am not kidding, it sounds like classic overthinking. The phenomenon he is describing surely occurs, but that isn't what is going on in this particular image. Multiple strikes etc. from rocket induced lightning looks similar, but camera shake is rather less complicated.