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Storm Chaser Turns 2 Years’ Worth of Amazing Lightning Adventures into Epic 4K Video

By Jessica Stewart on September 30, 2019

If you had any doubts about the power of nature, just tune into storm chaser Dustin Farrell‘s new video. In this three-and-a-half-minute highlight reel, Farrell takes us along on two years of storm chasing adventures. Shot with his Phantom Flex 4, the 4K video is a stunning look at lightning strikes and storm clouds as they dramatically take over the environment.

To get the footage, Farrell traveled 35,000 miles traveled, used 30 terabytes of hard drive space, spent 300 hours doing post-production, and only got three speeding tickets. The results are well worth it. Transient 2 combines Farrell's 1,000 fps Phantom footage with traditional time-lapse imagery, creating a mesmerizing video that pays homage to the power of weather. The impressive footage is a sequel to Farrell's 2017 Transient, which currently has over 7 million views.

When he's not chasing storms, Farrell works as a Director of Photography and is a veteran of the film and television industry. His skills as a camera operator and Phantom tech certainly comes in handy for these personal projects. In fact, Farrell put his expertise to good use when selecting the Phantom Flex 4 for the project.

“The Phantom Flex4K is a camera that must be post triggered while shooting high speed,” he writes on YouTube. “This works out well for capturing lightning because the camera is always recording and rewriting to internal ram. As soon as a bolt appears in my viewfinder I trigger the camera to save what has been stored in the ram. Shooting at high frame rates requires a lot of light. Therefore, I mostly used my Zeiss Otus 28, 55, and 85 mm lenses wide open at f/1.4.”