Now I've got my finger at the end of the screw driver. I again am able to get a blue puff off that right needle before the hanging pin magnetically pulls over to the screw driver....where it zaps my finger while contacting the right needle as well.

Check this out, I'm touching the top of the hanging needle with the screw driver getting the blue no zap stuff at the needle tip. If you look close you can see at least three blue spots under that on the metal. Again, there is no static zap with this. It's just what it does when it really really wants to zap. Thinking about lightning now some things become a little clearer. Like when people claim they felt something before the lightning hit nearby or during it, but they never got hit themselves by the direct discharge.

On this one I snuck the screw driver in down low at an angle. As I near the tip of the hanging needle a blue short stream is coming off that right needle apparently wanting to come over to the hanging needle(remember, there is already an established magnetic pull between the needles....which I have no idea if it's really related to this shocking or not). Look really really close and you can see a tiny blue/purple dot at the tip of the hanging needle.

Closer shot of this blue stream stuff.

Another closer shot. You can actually see some of the blue collecting over on the screw driver head. Again.....no zap here...just getting as close to the thing as I could without getting the zap. It was really neat at times. I could do this and where it would really flicker was where the needle was taped to the metal. I could move in and watch it flicker.....flicker.....flicker....flicker down there....all while not getting the zap yet.

Time for some finger getting zapped close ups. The object in the front here is a drill bit...not a real big one. The zap is fanning out as it gets my finger. Not sure what those balls of light are in the zap. It's interesting how much they look like veins when it does it to your finger.

It's quite the challenge having the focus just right to do that. Even though you are almost touching the drill bit you have to focus past it. And it is now abundantly clear to me why lightning often appears soft. It largely is a soft object. I mean on these getting my finger here, from front to back it goes from out of focus to focus to out of focus again, so somewhere in there should be sharp.

This was tough. On many of these before I had the hallway light on to sort of light up the needles, etc. To get 5 zaps I'd obviously have to recharge by feet rubbing between each one. So the shutter would then need to be open a lot longer. If the shutter is open a lot longer, well, I'm using 1600 ISO to get these to show well(the zaps, etc), I'd not be able to leave that hallway light on...the shot would blow out. So, what does that mean? It was really really dark in my apartment now. Imagine trying to rub the feet, come back over and touch the needle you didn't get zapped by yet.....when you can't see them. I got that needle second from the left two times....obviously. So I did 6 zaps in one exposure. This was near my window, so it looks lighter than it is(1600 ISO over much time will brighten the heck out of anything). I could just barely make out the bench arms, but not the needles. Took me a few tries. Half the time I was zapping the metal below the needles as I'd reach in.

On a weight bench there are those safety catches for the bar if you can't get it all the way back up. This is now on one of those. I've opened up a pen, took it apart, stuck the wire down in there with a needle taped to the end of it......and taped the pen to the metal so the wire and needle weren't touching metal. I needed to do this to get the needle really close without touching. My hope was at the angle here I could get close ups of any rolling plasma balls like I thought I got earlier. That wasn't happening though. I did get this interesting no zap blue stream stuff. Evidently I had that needle tip very close to dead middle between the shortest points.

That is what it looks like when you get the zap, much brighter than these blue stream deals, or blue particle things. Fun stuff.