Aurora Borealis

melekalikimaka

Planning a trip up to northern Norway, hopefully late January, to take a few snaps of the Northern Lights, has anyone on here headed over and tried this, I'm looking for some first hand advice, my missus is Norwegian so accom and travel advice isn't overly needed but much appriciated. More the aspect of actually finding locations, sources for information, equipment requirments set ups and the like. Sites I have looked at give very basic information, I've figured out how to predict the intesity of the lights so far... but its hard to find a central source for information from a photography aspect.

Cheers

PixelTrawler

Hi
Check my pix or flickr links for images of northern lights i took in iceland last month. On a mobile device now but i can post back later with what i used and settings. One thing for sure, the quality of your sensor has a huge impact on clean high iso images. I use a 5d2 and was very happy with 3200 iso images. There were crop shooters there also that were disappointed with 400 iso shots.

If you dont have a full frame, beg borrow or steal one

Burnt

Hi Melekalikimaka,

I recommend you take some spare batteries and keep them in an inside pocket,
the cold really depletes the battery's power. You also should watch for fogging,
when you come in from the cold. If you place the camera in a zip lock bag while
outside, then let it warm up to the inside temp in a cooler room or the hallway
before opening.

Another thing is that metal tripods get very bloody cold, if yours doesn't already
have foam on the legs, some 3/4" pipe insulation or bubble warp and some duct
or insulating tape does a good job. A good pair of thin gloves are handy too.

nilhg

Unfortunately I've no personal experience of this but I've seen a few posts over on the DPReview Oly forum by Mark Humpage, he does quite alot of long exposure nighttime work, including at least one trip to the high Arctic to shoot the northern lights, his homemade dew shield might be of interest to you.
Have a root through his galleries there's plenty of info there.

WheresMyCamera?

Found this link while looking for something completely different. May be of some use.

nilhg

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8217618174/auroral-photography-a-guide-to-capturing-the-northern-lights