Thanks Crutschow, what you say is so true.
I've decided I will leave the Amp section in as it will be adjustable it the gain can be turned down if required.
I'm also thinking of of adding a 2 LED BAR graphs, one showing the actual level of the light (output from opamp IC1A) and another showing the "trigger adjustment level" (+ input into IC1B), not shown in schem yet.
This should hopefully give me a better indication of the levels at a quick glance, Any comments?
But I have one more possible problem:
I can set the camera to have a certain shutter speed, which when the camera is triggered by the "lightning trigger circuit" it will take the photo and the shutter will close, if the trigger circuit is still HIGH (triggering mode) it will just taking pictures, not a problem. But if I set it to bulb (holds shutter open until trigger released), the circuit may just hold the shutter open if there is alot of lightning around, causing the picture to be over exposed. How could I use another 555 to create a max time threshold?
And since speed is a use concern, by adding all these extra components/section does this slow the actual reponce time of the circuit? As my camera already has a lag time of about 70ms, and need to keep it as low as possible, hopefully under the 100ms mark?
Thanks in advace.