How to: Catching the Auroras
Updated: Jan 3
Capturing the auroras, or merly being able to see them with your own eyes is pure magic. A beautiful event caused by solar storms casting electromagnetic particles towards earth getting caugth in earths magnetic field and displayed as light around the magnetic poles. This post is meant as a little how to, to get you started in capturing the auroras - enjoy.
You can nerd pretty hard on the subject of auroras, but if you just want to see them, and possible capture them through your lens you don’t have to. For some guidence and a little bit of help there are apps and other tools to help you along the way. But on the other hand, if you are more interested in the subject I recommend you take a course. Here you will learn a lot more of the what, why and when regarding aurora, and the amazing phenomena it is. Many do online live courses and it is worth the price if you are serious about your photography.
My self took a course from Adrien Mauduit, this guy knows his stuff period. And did a great job making me understand it more. A little shootout to him. Look him up here: nightlightsfilms.com
But if you don’t want to go all in and spend a lot, this is where to start. In short you only really need three things, four I you are going to capture it with a camera. First you have to live or visit a place near the poles, which sits under or close to the where the aurora is visable. Known as the auroral zone or auroral oval. Stretching around 2500 km out from the magnetic poles. In the north where it is easiest to travel to, this oval sits around the lattitudes 60 to 75 degree North. Thus encompassing the northern part of Norway where I live but also Sweden, Finland, Russia, Island, Canada and the southern part of Greenland. Next you need darkness, and third somewhat clear skies. And fourth if you are going to capture it with a camera, you need a lens that has a larger aperature. preferably 2.8 or bigger.
When can you see it?
Since this zone also lies above the arctic circle, the auroras are only visable during darker periods of the year. In Tromsø, a famous place to visit for seeing the auroras. They are visible from around september to march.
In the pre snow phase, the landscape will be pretty dark and dull. So finding a lake to reflect the light will give some nice results. When the snow comes, the landscape will light up more and you can get more visable landscape in your photographies.
As all photographers pointing their camera to the sky, unnatural light is a hassel. The darker a place you can find, the better the sky will show it self, and the auroras will be more visible. So if you are heading out, having some knowledge where the night sky will be dark is good to know in advance. In short planning is key. the auroras has a tendency to appear fast and equally disappear. Don’t waste it, use your time rather to be ready and done setting up your gear when it appears.
Planning, does it matter?
When we are on the subject of planning, we can talk a little bit more about it. As I said, my experience is time used in advance, is gained later. If you live where the auroras are. Do your time scouting out locations where you will get what you need to maximize your potential for a great show. And have more than one option. Where you go, depends on your needs, clouds etc. If you are visiting, use a guide. They know the best places. Regarding planning tools, there are quite a few options. With apps, one to download can be: Aurora. This gives a good portion of information. But there are many others, find one that suit your needs. A nice website to have available at hand is: aurorainfo.eu
Here you will find forecasts, live imagery and more. I use these two alot in my hunting and planning for catching the light.
In short this is all you need to be able to see them. But one have to realise that nothing is guaranteed. I have had many trips going out expecting to witness quite a show, coming home having witnessed just a small stripe or nothing. If you are into photography and wanting to start capturing the auroras, continue reading as I will share some of my tips.
Gearing up for capturing the auroras
What gear do you need? not much in general, but you need some. First of all you need a sturdy tripod. You don´t need the super expensive ones, but you need one that can carry the weight of your camera and keep it stable. If you invest in a medium range one, you will probably have that for a very long time if you give it a little bit of love. Looking at the weight is also advisable, especially if you are going to hike longer distances or travel with it. I use the Rollei C5i carbon tripod. And I am very happy with it. It is very light, but still more than sturdy enough. It has a nice feature of being able to transform to a monopod if you need it. The user hight is very nice being able to set it up very low, and also at normal viewing hight.
Camera whise you can probably capture the auroras with pretty much any camera body, what really matters when regarding the camera is the lens itself. You need a lens that has a larger aperature of 2.8 or greater to capture the quick fluctuations in the light. the larger the number is, say like 3.5, 4 or greater you need to set the shutter speed for a very long opening say 10-15 sec to capture the light. Giving a washed out feel it the light is dancing and moving fast over the sky. Having a 2.8 lens you can shoot the same photograph with the shutter set at 1,6 to 2 sec. So there is a big difference.
So if you want to venture into capturing the auroras I highly recommend saving up for a lens in the 12-24 mm or 16-35 mm range and having a aperture of 2.8 or greater. Myself use the Sony 14 mm f1.8 GM as my primary lens and the Sigma 24-70 mm F2.8 DG DN art as my secondary. This is a great prime lens that will yield you amazing clear shots. And also perform very well shooting auroras and other night related scenes. Having the 24-70, which is my workhorse but still able to capture very good night photos I can if needed zoom in a bit more, since the 14 mm gives a pretty wide view.
Camera body wise, use what you have. The better the sensor, the better the result. Having a full frame camera is also great giving a larger field of view, but not necessery. The most important thing is the lens. This is where you should spend your money, if you wonder what to use most on between camera house or lens. Myself use the Sony A7r III, a wonderful camera that I find really good for taking lowlight photographs. This is a mirrorless full frame camera with a 42.4 MP sensor.
Setting up the camera
So you got the camera and all the necessery gear, and you have arrived at your location. What now? Now you set your camera to manual mode, and lens to manual focus. Why you might ask, and I will tell you why. Shooting auroras you have to set up both the shutterspeed and aperture in advance. This can´t vary due to the given light. Because using the other modes the camera will always try to get the right exporsure. And this will not give you what you want.
This goes with out saying, always shoot in RAW, not jpeg. You need all the information when you edit the photos afterwards.
I will take you through how I set up my settings. And you can use this and mend them to your camera.
Lens - Sony 1.8 mm f/1.8 GM
camera - Sony A7R III
Settings:
Manual mode
manual focus
RAW file mode
ISO: 1000-4000
WB: Auto
Shutterspeed: 1 sec - 10 sec. (Important, over 15 sec and you will get star trails)
Aperture: 1.8-2.8
Sony has a nice feature when using manual focus where it will zoom in, and if clicked on points in focus will glow red. Shooting Aurora I use the stars as anchor points. This is a very nice feature when shooting manual, and probably available on other brands aswell. Check your camera if you have this feature or something similar.
Regarding shutterspeed and ISO. Play with these two settings, and see what fits you the best given the conditions you have when you are shooting. These are the only ones you can control and adjust. And you have to adjust these regarding of how bright or dim the aurora or sky is. The darker the sky and dimmer the aurora is, the longer the shutterspeed has to be or higher the ISO, and vice versa. Don´t be afraid of using high ISOs, if you have a newer camera it will probably handle it just fine. A higher ISO can also give you other colours. Low ISO tend to display more greens, higher ISO gives more blue and purple. Play with the settings and learn what your camera can handle.
Where the Aurora really comes to show is in edit afterwards. Aurora photography rarely need a lot of editing in my opinion, since it often gives it a fake look pretty fast, or look very overedited. So use small adjustments to see what gives you what you want.
I will make another post on my post processing of these types of photography.
Here is an example of RAW vs edit. I personally like the ice blue theme. But this is all self preferance.
In the RAW version you can see alot of what I have talked about. The yellow in the clouds and background comes from non natural light of a city nearby. Also the back glow on the right side is from this lighting. Using colder tones in post processing can help you mend these colours. The image is shot in september, early in the aurora season. So the scenery is very dark. Therfor using a lake to your advantage can brighten up your image and give it more play. The mountains and background in the early season will tend to be very dark and hard to retain any details. In the later season, when snow has arrived the background will light up more. And if you have a full moon aswell. Well you are probably gonna get a pretty awesome picture.
Hope you learned something from this post. Stay tuned for more. And if you have any questions send me a dm, and I would be happy to chat.
T.
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