Nordic Light

1 place (2016/05) group Contest Without Prize 'Green'.

I am far from being a professional northern light photographer but it hurts a little when I see people trying to make pictures of the northern light using automatic presets and a flash.
So maybe I can come with some pointers for those who are trying to catch the aurora one time. The main thing is; keep it simple. What you need is a camera with manual settings, wide angle lens, a stable tripod, location, good clothes and some luck.
Get to know your camera so that you are able to control the exposure time, the aperture, focus and the ISO settings. The ISO setting is most important as high settings often mean noise in your image. The amount of noise depends also on the qualitiy of the camera. Try to find out how much noise you can accept. For simpler cameras ISO 500 is perhaps the limit, for higher quality cameras
ISO 3200 or higher is not any problem.
The aurora is not a static phenomenon, it is moving and varies a lot in brightness. So when you have found the ISO values you are confortable with, it is a all about balancing the exposure time and the aperture. The aperture can be more of importance if there is light polution. A smaller aperture means a greater depth of field and light pollution, f.ex. streetlights, will be shown as a nice star instead of a spot.
That brings me to the location. Try to find a place with a minimum of light pollution. That is hard to find even here in northern Norway when you are not in the middle of nowhere. Preferably use a wide angle lens.It makes it much easyer to cover a large part of the sky. As long as the aurora is the main focus, just set your focus on infinite. I learned that a good quality tripod is a necessity. Sometimes the exposure time can get quite long and when it is blowing the cheaper tripods are not stable enough.
I hope this is of some help and I would appreciate comments and thoughts about this issue.

The kit I use for aurora photographing:
Canon EOS 6D (full frame for low noise when using higher ISO settings),
Samyang ED AS IF UMC 14 (easy to use manual wide angle lens) and
a stable tripod from Benro.
The settings of the photograph above: ISO 640, exp. time 15'' and F/8.
Don't forget the chocolate...

You will find the high resolution image here: 1x.com/photo/1023171/all:user:505580

Lonely Man Photography © All Rights Reserved.


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