How do Strike Finders Work?

Here’s some of the nuts and bolts on how the Strike Finder works. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we do.  We would love to hear from you and see the great pictures you take with it. Please tag us with @StrikeFinderPhoto.

Shutter Lag

The SF2 detects bolts of lightning and fires your camera within 1 millisecond.  However, all cameras have some shutter lag (the time between the shutter release being pressed and the shutter actually opening).  The SF2 puts your camera in ‘pre-focus’ mode (pressing the shutter release half-way) to reduce your cameras shutter lag.  Depending on your camera, being in pre-focus mode may restrict which functions are available.  If you need to access a one of these functions, unplug the SF2. By utilizing pre-focus mode, the Strike Finder 2 is streaming fast and enables you to capture more bolts.

There are many settings that can adversely affect shutter lag.  Check out imaging resources to see how fast your camera responds and verify that all your setting minimize shutter lag.  In general, the less you have on, the better.  Image stabilization, auto focus, live view, GPS, etc. all slow down the shutter lag which is bad.

A lightning bolt is made up multiple strokes.  When a bolt appears to flicker, this is your eyes detecting the tiny gaps between the strokes.  The average bolt lasts 1/5 of a second and is comprised of 4 individual strokes.  The faster your camera responds, the better chance you have of catching the bolt with all of it’s streamers.

Sensitivity

The SF2 will very slowly increase its sensitivity if a storm is out of range.  If a storm is close enough that every flicker is being detected, the SF2 will decrease its sensitivity.