This cloud brought electrical death!
I normally don't put photography stuff on my blog, but as
this is such an interesting story and also a cautionary tale I felt just this
once I was allowed. Just after dinner
this evening we had a massive storm right over our house. Now as I'd just got delivery of my 5D Mk2
about 3 days beforehand I thought this would be the perfect chance to use it
(I've been too busy with work the rest of the time).
So off I went outside with my wife and daughter (who had
never seen a storm or lightning before) and started filming and taking
photos. I didn't think too much about
it, even when a massive crack of lightning happened and my camera flickered like
I had just shorted out the battery or something. I kept filming and caught some amazing
footage of a lighting storm about as close as you ever want to get. 3 inches of rain fell in a little over a minute and a half. The worst storm I've seem here since the Epic consett lightning storm of 1995 that fried electrics over a 2 mile radius. (anyone local around at the time remembers it well!)
So after it had passed I rushed to my computer to download
everything...only to find that the storm had screwed up my brand new Scandisk memory
card (that cost £90 as it washigh speed and intended for video). I got a handful of photos off it but the camera
and the card kept giving errors. Finally
I stuck the card directly into the slot in my main PC and started a recovery
process...followed by recovering corrupt unfinished MOV files.
The video above shows what I could recover from the storm footage up to the moment it all went 'pair shaped guv'.
Now I have to admit being scared shitless of
testing my camera again in case it screwed that up as well. It took me a fair
old while to round up the money to spare that I could spend on it (as my rule is only money I make selling stuff or paid directly into ebay gets used for my camera stuff.)
So I am putting off testing the 5D at the moment..that going
down only days after I bought it would be to horrible to contemplate. (although
par for the course with the epic bad luck I usually have).
Weirdest of all... the storm also shutdown every single mobile
phone in our house, all unplugged and fully charged. I've no idea why...answers on a postcard
please. But anyway here's the video I
caught such as it is (with unfortunately the best parts missing with epic sheet and fork lighting.)
