Epic lightning captured at 1,000fps

Not many photographers can boasts a $110,000 Phantom Flex4K high-speed camera in their kit. Photographer and filmmaker Dustin Farrell's amazingly epic 4K short film, Transient, was the result of travelling over 20,000 miles for more than a month in search of storms worth capturing. Most of the lightning was captured in Farrell’s home state of Arizona.

"Transient is a compilation of the best shots from my storm chasing adventures of summer 2017,” Farrell says. “Most of the lightning footage was captured in uncompressed raw at 1000 frames per second.” Farrell admits that the project was one of the most difficult he has ever attempted in his career, and on at least 10 days, he returned home with no footage following ten hour chases and 500 miles travelled.

“Lightning is like a snowflake. Every bolt is different,” Farrell says. “I learned that lightning varies greatly in speed. There are some incredible looking bolts that I captured that didn't make the cut because even at 1000fps they only lasted for one frame during playback. I also captured some lightning that appear computer generated it lasted so long on the screen.”

In order to produce his 3-minute masterpiece, Farrell captured roughly 10 terabytes of data. One can only imagine how mammoth a task the editing must have been.