Aurora Watch Red Alert

[Gronnuck]

Camera, check ..... tripod, check ..... Lafuma folding chair, check. Now all I need is good advice from all you nice photographic experts who've done all this before. All tips, hints and advice will be greatly appreciated - and - I might even be able to publish the results on this forum (fingers crossed).

[Gronnuck]

Humph - obviously all the photos expert types were too busy looking up at the sky :(:confused

[Timber-TEC]

Hi
I am not an expert, but for aurora set up your ISO to 800 or 1600, exposure time somwhere between 15 and 30 seconds, if you use kit lens then set it up wide open.

[Tugmistress]

and i try it slightly different, iso down at about 400, f number as low as it will go, and exposure time depends on brightness of moon, really bright about 10 seconds, no moon about 1 minute.
experiment gronnuck and you will find what works for you personally :)

[Gronnuck]

Whoooo-hoooo now you've got me all a-fluster. I'll tell you what - as soon as the sky clears I'm going to sit out in the dark and play with the camera. I'll tell everyone Timber-TEC and Tugmistree told me to ;-)

[Tugmistress]

hehe go for it :) playing is a great way to learn ;)

[Timber-TEC]

Practice will make you a master of aurora :).
But if you want to have a stars as a points (not trailed) than do not go above 30second exposure.

[Mystical Potato Head]

Dont go below ISO 800 otherwise you end up with too long exposures and the beams or rays of light all blend into
one another and you lose the effect of the aurora.The shortest exposure i've taken is 15 seconds at ISO 1600,that was a bright display with a full moon.
If i used ISO 800 then i would have needed a 30 second exposure but the rays of light wouldnt be so sharp,at ISO 400 it would have been a minute
and the rays of light would be merging into one another.

If you have a cropped censor camera then you get trailing of stars after 21 seconds .(using a lens at 18mm)
I'm using 18mm as an example because a lot of kit lenses are 18-50 or thereabouts.

If you use the 600 rule you can work out how long an exposure you can take.
Divide your lens aperture into 600 so if you have a lens at 18mm that will give you 33 seconds.
Thats only if you have a full frame sensor camera
With a cropped sensor camera you have to multiply the lens aperture by 1.6 so an 18mm lens becomes 28.8
resulting in 21 seconds exposure.

Heres a couple of examples and the camera settings to give you an idea.

All taken with Canon 5DMKII and Canon 17-40mm L lens.

Aurora under full moon
15 second exposure
20mm @ f4
ISO 1600

http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo189/sat5_photos/IMG_4382flickr.jpg

crescent moon just out of shot.
25 second exposure
27mm @ f4
ISO 1600

http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo189/sat5_photos/3277flickr.jpg

no moon
20 second exposure
28mm @ f5.6
ISO
1000

http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo189/sat5_photos/IMG_2192flickr.jpg

[dragonfly]

fantastic advice and photos MPH, thanks

[Timber-TEC]

Thanks MPH for your input.
Going back to trailing stars it also depends on what part of the sky camera is pointing at, so I think that rule which you gave for exposure time should be treated as a safe estimate. I have Canon 1000D which has cropped sensor and in most cases star trailing is not visible for exposures up to 30 second especially for parts of the sky high over horizont and especially close to the Polaris for 18mm focal length.

[Mystical Potato Head]

Yes,the further you are from polaris then the further the stars trail for the same given time,should have mentioned that
but if you print them large you'll notice the trailing,even when centered on polaris so if you want small prints or images for
your computer then you would probably get away with longer.
I have a couple of milky way shots(cygnus area to the Northwest) on my flickr site that are 60 seconds and 88 seconds,you dont really notice any trailing
on the small image.Zoom in and it looks hellish.
Be cool if Orion was to the North instead of being almost as far away from Polaris as you get.

[astroman]

Some great advice here on capturing natures great light display - MPH has provided some very useful example settings in his advice, but if like me you have a camera that is undesirably noisy at the highish ISOs mentioned you may have to compromise a bit. The suggestions made are excellent starting points, but tweak to suit the conditions and the capability of your camera. Practice makes perfect............eventually ;)

Now all we need is for the clouds to go away so we can get the practice.