( music playing )
Ooh, that was a long flight.
17 and a half hour flight.
- I'll tell you it was worth it, though. - Definitely worth it.
We're on top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore.
Believe it or not, we're not just here on holiday,
we're actually working very hard.
'Cause it has one of the highest rates of lightning strikes
in the world.
And it's currently in November at the time we're recording this.
Which is the most active month for lightning strikes.
It should be a very interesting subject to film.
I've never filmed lightning.
It's incredibly fast, incredibly unpredictable.
Also very dangerous. Which makes you wonder why we're on the roof.
Yeah, well, thankfully, there's no storm in currently,
but why don't we set up the Phantom in a nice, safe location
and wait for a storm to roll in.
- In a bit. - In a bit.
Ah!
( music playing )
Here we are in a hotel room
looking out at the Singapore skyline.
Today, we're using a Phantom v2512.
We often use the 2511,
but this has much more internal memory.
288 gigs.
And we can usually record what, like four seconds with the--
- Two seconds. - Two seconds.
This will record almost eight at 28,500 frames a second,
but we're gonna be running this slightly differently to how we usually shoot.
In that, I'm gonna firstly partition the round into multiple segments.
And I'm also gonna use a feature called Image Based Auto-Trigger.
What do you know about it?
It sounds like
'cause it's automatically triggering it
that you're out of a job.
( laughs ) Well, sort of.
Let me run you through it.
So the first thing I'm gonna do
is we typically only use one partition in the memory.
We can record for the whole thing.
This capacity allows us to record for almost eight seconds.
And because of the duration of a lightning strike you don't need eight seconds.
So essentially more beneficial
if we say get eight different partitions.
Giving us a round a second for each capture.
So what I've done is I've set this little area, this little box.
- See the red box? - Yeah.
And then I can set how often it checks and the sensitivity
of how big the pixel change has to be
for it to register a trigger.
And then I can position this box wherever,
so I gonna point it in the sky.
That way anything down here, you know, people taking pictures
or anything like that shouldn't affect it.
But if lightning comes down through the top
it should trigger the camera,
automatically save that point nine seconds into the mag,
and just immediately go again.
So you're saying that if it sees lightning it'll save it
- for you. - Yeah.
And now in theory, if I change--
if I mimic some lightning here...
- Yeah. - What it'd do?
Immediately triggered and then stopped and it's recording again.
It went in a solid circle and then it started recording again.
So it went one and then when I turned it off it went another one.
And you can see now it's immediately recording into the mag.
Oh, yeah. So-- 'Cause it was so quick.
When you did it it went two, three like that.
- Yeah. - It was immediate. Wow.
So this is pretty much set up now.
So now what we need to do is wait for it to become nighttime
or wait a lightning strike
and it should capture and save automatically
until it's completely full.
So now we just wait.
But wait if it does everything automatically,
should we... should we just-- Pub?
- Pub. - Pub.
( music playing )
( thunder roaring )
Go! Go! Go! My God.
- ( laughs ) - Watch out, watch out.
We're on the wrong side of the hotel.
Gonna miss all the lightning.
My shorts are falling down.
Gotta be striking on the Bay side.
The oceans have got nothing on this end.
( indistinct chatter )
- We're the opposite. - We were so well set up in there.
- Go ahead. - Ooh, ow!
Sorry.
All right.
This is good.
There's no glass over here.
( thunder roaring )
( lightning crackling )
( music playing )
- Oh, wow! - The whole sky lit.
Throughout the whole ocean.
It just knows lightning might be there
and so I can always focus.
Yeah, it's lightning.
( laughs )
Yeah.
Dan: Oh, wow!
Wow.
Well, that was some absolutely beautiful footage.
I'm so relieved we got it.
I'm just so relieved we actually had a lightning storm.
'Cause imagine coming all the way to Singapore for no reason.
- That would suck. - That would've been the worst.
I also have a massively newfound respect for lightning.
I mean, I knew it was dangerous, right,
but it made those ships look like little toys
- in like a bathtub. It was incredible. - It was so scary.
I was so fascinated to see the difference in speed
between all the feeler forks
- compared to the big, bright strike. - Yeah.
Absolutely insane.
Completely blew it out, didn't it?
Oh, that was a really fun video to make.
Hopefully, you enjoyed it.
Feel free to subscribe. Check out part two
where we're gonna learn more about lightning
and Dan's gonna get shocked.
- What? - What?