Big sprite on April 21st 2009

I just had my first use of the Computar 8-48mm f/1.2 zoom lens on sprites last night (21-22 April). A thunderstorm of unexpected proportions (mesoscale convective system) developed south of the French coast and when I installed the camera I got sprites within the first few minutes already. The thunderstorm was only 140 km away from me. To my surprise the second event was huge. Here is a snapshot image for now, I will soon publish sprite images to my website (also a lot of 2008) which will have better appearance (I am combining stacked video and noise-reduced stills).

Clouds interfered with the observation, 6 sprites were recorded between 2058 and 2151 UT, and some Lyrid meteors.