Northern Lights - best settings

ablelocks

what are the best settings to photograph northern lights with a canon 6d mark ii and 17-40mm lens? had the wrong lens on last night, and tried to use P mode but couldn't get a good pic. I'm not that knowledgeable with manual settings yet but want to be better prepared for tonight if they do reappear…

Cherry Blossom

You’ll just need to mess about with the settings in manual mode till you get what you want for your conditions. Shutter speed 15 - 25 seconds, iso as low as you can manage and aperture somewhere in the mid range f7 - f13.

Most importantly you need to be in manual focus mode. It doesn’t really matter what you focus in but your lens will probably keep hunting if you’re in auto focus. Its a button on the lens, not the camera.

Cherry Blossom

Tripod is essential.

The Continental Op

My wife wants to give taking some photos tonight. Her camera is an old FinePix and the longest shutter speed and F stop are 8 seconds and F2.9. I can also change the "film" ISO to something like 1600 (there are settings for 3200 and 6400).

Any ideas if that will work at all? Have good tripod.

There is also a setting for taking photos of fireworks so that looks like its worth a try.

Cherry Blossom

It might do. It just depends on cloud cover etc, where you are. I’m not familiar with the camera so don’t know if it’s known to be good in low light situations.

Cherry Blossom

One of my photos from last night, 3 of us went out in Donegal, all photography amateurs but all first timers looking for the aurora. We all had different cameras but helped each other out and figured it out between us.

Gregor Samsa

My settings last night (Sony A1)

14mm lens, 13s, f2.8, ISO 400, tripod. Manual focus. This is 4 shots stitched

Obviously shooting in a suburban environment, so my settings might have been a bit different if I was in a darker place. Apart from stitching the panorama (which Photoshop can do automatically), there's hardly any post-processing in this shot - a teeny bit of Texture in Lightroom to bring out the stars (which you can't even see at the size Boards resizes the image to).

Apart from choosing a better location - (I was stuck with being at my house, so I could only venture over to a local green), next time, I'd take 8 or 10 shots for the pano, and get a little more foreground and not cut off the top of the arch.

The lens (Sony 14mm G Master) can do f1.8 - I don't think opening it up wide would have made much difference (knocked a second off the exposure).

I never thought 14mm wouldn't be wide enough, but the arch was huuuuuge. If you're shooting at 17mm, and you don't have an interesting foreground subject, try a pano with 10 or 12 shots.

Here's a crop of a singe 14mm shot of the top of the arch from my back garden (just cut the bottom off it, because it was the roof of a house). This was 1.3s at ISO 3200 (I must have knocked the tripod slightly, because there's motion on the stars). Had to run a little noise reduction on this one with the higher ISO.

cnocbui

I used a 12-40mm f2.8 zoom. M4/3 camera so 12mm is same fov as a full frame sensor camera lens at 24mm. Small sensor so ISO 200, 400 and 800 were used, but wound it back to 400. Exposures of 15 sec at iso 200 as I was feeling my way, but found the groove around 4am, with 8 sec exposures at ISO 400.

I started out processing the images straight but found I frankly prefer detuning the red channel a bit as my sensor was delivering just too lurid pinks and reds, swamping the other colours present.

This was 12mm, f2.8, iso 400, 8 sec unadjusted straight out of the camera

And this is the adjusted version with some curves tweaking of the RGB channels individually, pulling some red out by not increasing the highlights as much as G&B, increased highlights and pulled the curve low in shadows and up a bit in the mids to give a slight S curve.

Adrian.Sadlier

I was on the East Pier in Howth last night. Using a Nikon Z8 and a 7Artisans 10mm Fish Eye full frame manual lens (no electronics at all). Single fame, shot at ISO 3200, f/2.8, 2.5". The lights are moving so personally I think a shorter shutter speed is better.

Nigzcurran

Some class pics there folks 👌🏻

Alexus25

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122123974#Comment_122123974

Surprised you got any picture in such a lit up area

dam099

Canon EOS R6 with RF-16mm @ f/2.8, 8 seconds, ISO 640 (Auto ISO)

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122124713#Comment_122124713

it’s Ennis, Co. Clare. The street lighting is pretty local and small-scale, rather than the kind of invasive light pollution Dublin City has. I can take acceptable shots of the Andromeda galaxy from here

ablelocks

thanks for all the info - photos are class. we had cloud cover last night where i am. feck sake.

Goldengirl

Lovely pictures.. everybody , thanks for posting .

Saw them Friday night /Sat morning but only a phone with me and cloud cover last night .

Great to see them though .

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122129990#Comment_122129990

This seems to be the main thread for pictures in general:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058351083/aurora-watch-this-weekend

Goldengirl

Thanks @cnocbui

drunkmonkey

Any recommendations on a lense upgrade, disappointed with my shots the other night, I was using 10-20mm Sigma 5.6DCM, pictures were way to grainy. I've a 50mm 1.4 and Sigma 70-300 5.6 but these aren't really suitable from what i've tried.

Was thinking a maybe a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II or Just a prime lense maybe a 14mm, using it with a 7D MK ii, just something that's good for shooting the stars/night/moon without too much grain, probably looking at buying a second hand one.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122717204#Comment_122717204

You generally need something wide and fast for landscape astro. I'm on Sony, and use the 14mm f1.8. But I've stopped it down to f2.8 (see the 4 shot pano from the previous aura show in May is further up the thread), and that's been fine.

So the 16-35 f2.8 should do you if you don't want to go for a dedicated prime - it'll be useful as a walk around daytime lens too. I've a Sony 16-35 f2.8 that I use for wide astro sometimes with good results.

Remember, if you're looking for a dramatic wide shot, you can always stitch two or more frames together if 16mm isn't wide enough.

I don't know the specific Canon lenses, so I'm just talking in general terms.

drunkmonkey

Cheeers @Gregor Samsa they're great shots, what did you use for the andromena galaxy picture, it's pretty impressive, how long was the exposure.

I spotted the sigma 18-35mm F1.8, I think that might do what i'm looking for.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122719711#Comment_122719711

The Andromeda one was shot with a Samyang 135mm f1.8 @ f1.8, 30 seconds at ISO 640 (on a Sony A1). It was a blended stack of maybe 30 images (I can't remember now exactly), and shot on a Benro Polaris Astro tracking mount, which rotates with the earth to prevent the stars from trailing over long exposures. Took it from my back garden in Co. Clare.

Here's one of the out-of-camera frames with no processing:

One thing that I learned from doing it is that impressive deep sky astrophotography requires a LOT of processing - to the point that it kind of isn't just photography any more. Like, it's a lot more than just adjusting a few sliders in Lightroom - it's creating complicated masks, taking whole sections out of the image, processing that one way while you process the rest of the image another way, then blending it all back together again. It's fine - that's the only way you can get light from 2.5 million light years away to represent what's "really" there - but it's not the kind of thing I'm into doing too much of personally.