Photographing the aurora borealis

StewartR

StewartR

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Has anybody in TP-land managed to take any good pictures of the aurora borealis? What equipment did you use? And, on reflection, what equipment would you recommend?

Some gratuitous pictures would be nice too.
 
Here's one I took a few years ago.
20Nov2003-32PB.jpg


I'd recommend a wide angle, this was taken at 16mm on a 1.6x crop. Focus on infinity and use a remote release and tripod. This was about a 25 sec exposure.
 
i found 17-40 wide open, on a tripod with remote release, ISO 100, 30 second exposure seemed to give best results, depends what else you might get in shot as to whether you need more light, as people were saying they would have preferred some ground detail on my shots but i didnt have the time to experiment too much.

Hope that helps.
 
Having spent 12 months in Iceland, I never saw them that colour. If you look at "VISTAS" desktop top shot you will see that they are a yellow green colour.
 
happy haggis said:
Here's one I took a few years ago.
20Nov2003-32PB.jpg


I'd recommend a wide angle, this was taken at 16mm on a 1.6x crop. Focus on infinity and use a remote release and tripod. This was about a 25 sec exposure.
Click to expand...

That does look good!
 
Being a noob I don't have a tripod and I doubt we'll be able to take one, I've ordered a 'gorillapod' and hopefully would be able to set something up on the fly, but if not just seeing them will be an experience of a lifetime :)

MB
 
Well here is my shot,

printing_northan_lights_-_Copy.jpg


and just to prove that you dont need the best equipment this was taken with my old Sony DSC-W1 compact resting it on top of a pair of gloves on the roof of a car. Two 30 sec exposures put together.

I took this before I started to get into photography a bit more but considering there was very little visual green light I was amazed how they came out. (hence the noise!!) I have been trying since to get a better a picture. I hope that I will be able to in March. (the PP could be better but I have not really tried too much on this!!)

Just gutted by the number of times I had the opertunity to see these before and never had a camera!!:bang::bang:
 
Matblack said:
I'm off to Iceland in three weeks and would be interested in this too, just in case we do get a clear night :)

MB
Click to expand...

I've always thought the best time to see the Northern lights was in Sept/Oct so I hope you get to see them in Feb but I've never had the chance to see them myself. I've heard if you are really lucky you can see them at the very top of Scotland at the right time of year !
 
Puz said:
I've always thought the best time to see the Northern lights was in Sept/Oct so I hope you get to see them in Feb but I've never had the chance to see them myself. I've heard if you are really lucky you can see them at the very top of Scotland at the right time of year !
Click to expand...

They won't be spectacular but there is a good chance at this time of year, the levels have been up to moderate in recent weeks and Iceland falls right in the area of visibilty so fingers crossed :)

MB
 
I've read that if you have a sky/UV filter fitted then you will get rings on the photo, so take it off first.
 
This is one of my dream photo ops too. The great images I've seen appear to have been taken on wide angles and long exposures. So I would imaging that a quality wide angle, decent tripod and remote release should be all you need. However, as you will be out at night in the cold you'll need to acclimatise the camera kit first to avoid condensation and I'd imagine with long exposures the batteries will die very very quickly so have lots.

I do know that they the light show is most likely at the peak of the 11 year Sunspot cycle (and the 3 years afterwards) and apparently they also more likely around the Equinoxes (December & June). Unfortunately 2008 was the minimum of the 11 year cycle so the next peak will be in 2013/2014. However, I'm guessing far enough north you stand a good chance regardless of the year or the month.
 
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