Use a 7D or 6D to shoot lightning over landscapes?

<p>As things warm up and we head into thunderstorm season, I want to photograph lightning over expansive mountain landscapes. I currently own a 7D and plan to use it with my 17-40 f4L lens. I've had some success using this combo to shoot lightning. The 8 fps burst on the 7D comes in mighty handy.<br /><br />I am also planning to add a 6D to my arsenal. When it comes to shooting mountain landscapes with my 17-40 f4L, the 6D and its full frame goodness are my preference hands-down. At least when I'm not after lightning. But I'm wondering if the slower frame rate will compromise my ability to capture the bolts. <br /><br />I do not want to fool with multiple bodies and lens swapping as a thunderstorm approaches. So which body would those of you experienced in this prefer?</p>

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<p>In my (albeit somewhat limited) experience shooting lightning at night, the FPS has zero benefit. I typically do long exposures though, which you apparently don't do. The reason is because I can set the exposure to give enough added dimension to the image to make it more than one blinding bolt (ie, actually include a background), and still be able to capture that bolt (or two). </p>

<p>Using the camera in this manner, FPS is an irrelevant aspect, since, by the time the shutter closes, the buffer has cleared and the camera is ready to shoot again (if you have LENR off). This seems to work pretty well for fireworks as well, leading to a very high percentage of frames that yield usable content.</p>

<p>In your shoes, I would undoubtedly use a 6D.</p>

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<p>I assume you are speaking of daytime lightning photography. At night you just need to open your shutter and wait. During the day there are several strategies to choose from. You can either react on a flash and it lasts or produces another strike when the shutter is open, or you can fire more or less randomly some shots when lightning should almost occur again. In the first case shorter shutter lag time helps, frames per second probably not that much since most of the time the first exposure is the one that counts. It does fill up your card faster. When you're deleting shots, Murphy's law tells the best lightning will happen. Note that minimizing your aperture beyond f/11 to increase exposure time will just give you less visible lightning. Also you need to expose darker (i.e. shorter) than you normally would, to make the flash stand out better. An advantage of the 6D is wifi: put the camera on a tripod in an all-weather housing, yourself in the car, and control it safely with a phone or laptop. The safest way to capture close strikes.</p>

<p>6D with the wifi is the way to go I think also.</p>

I have both the 6D, and the 7D and I take lightning photos on the regular basis. I would say that the 6D is the better

choise for its better dynamic range and lower noise on long exposures. I dont make use of high frame rate but for daylight

lightning shots I find that if you lock mirror up, and use manual focus you have enough time to react to lightning.