Fast As Lightning. Grab your rain cover and capture a picture-perfect lightning strike with this Lightning Bug Plus from MK Controls! This compact trigger attaches to the shoe mount of select cameras to quickly measure IR light levels, and preps your camera to capture lightning flashes at the exact moment they strike. While it does feature a shoe mount, you can still use the trigger off-camera with the separately available cable.

Cool, But How?! I was hoping you’d ask. Basically, there’s two components of a lightning strike: the smoldering and magnificent strike everyone (including you, my friend) wants to capture, and the forgotten and unseen infrared light that always precedes it. The Lightning Bug is equipped with a high-speed photodiode sensor that has been optimized to that infrared burst, which is pretty much just air vaporization and particles in the air. Acting as a lookout of sorts, the trigger waits patiently for that burst, immediately preps your camera for capture, and triggers it at the perfect moment. Pretty easy, right?

Sensitivity Adjustments. For different shooting environments or types of lightning capture, the sensitivity of the Lightning Bug can be adjusted. You would lower the sensitivity to capture bright and bold strikes, and increase the sensitivity to capture the strikes and surrounding elements like mountains, trees, and cities. There’s a total of 26 sensitivity levels to choose from, and the trigger offers a sensitivity LED bar graph to see exactly what sensitivity you should be using to get the results you want. The highest sensitivity is at level 26, with the lowest being level 1!

Design and Power. You’ll likely be shooting outdoors in the rain with this thing, so the entire design is constructed to be weatherproof. That includes all 3 soft-touch buttons, which controls any adjustments to all of the features! The Lightning Bug is powered off-camera through a required standard 9V battery, which can be replaced without removing the trigger from your camera’s shoe mount.

We have the required camera cable available for the following brands:

• Canon
• Sony
• Nikon
• Fuji (Mirrorless Only)
• Olympus
• Panasonic
• Pentax

Please Note: These cables only work with select cameras within their brand. Please check their individual pages for a list of all compatible cameras.