Aurora

In my experience, the naked eye view is poor, if at all, the camera will pick it up well, unless you have a very strong level, you wont see it, and when you do see it, its only a grey cloud like affect, I guess its like looking at the Orion nebula through a scope and then taking an image of it, this is just my experience

Hi Derek/Stevie,

Well done on catching that aurora display!

I've really only done aurora photography on slide film Neill and for a bright display I set the aperture at f/2.8 with a 20 second time exposure. Even that length of time might actually cause blurring of a particularly active display of drapes as the light rays move rapidly. It might be worth having a look at the gallery on spaceweather.com where some photographers will note the EXIF data or the camera/time exposure/aperture used.

Going back to my mention of slide film, I honestly think many aurora shots taken with digital cameras overdo the greens and reds, whereas on film the colour reproduction is better and more accurate. If I saw a very active display again (and live in hope!) then I would definitely photograph it on slide film and not with a DSLR.

John

From my experience of the St Patrick's Day aurora, the brighter rays gave the impression of distant car headlights arcing towards the zenith, with irregular patches appearing at lower levels. But it was all white light, the colours were only apparent on the images; it's made me suspicious of those dramatic shots we see from the Arctic circle!

I was using ISO 1600 with 15/20 sec exposures but the results were a bit dim, should have tried 3200 in hindsight.

Forgot to say Neill, I used Kodak and Fuji 400 ASA slide film. There's a few pics of the 2003 displays on my old Flickr page at the link below. All these were 20 seconds or so with f/2.8, a 50mm lens, and 400 ASA slide film. The green curtains photo with the Plough shows blurring due to the rapid motion of the drapes.

www.flickr.com/photos/92397104@N00/albums/72157600866332636

John

Hello john, it will all depend on where you are taking the, and how strong the Aurora is, if you use a fast shutter with a weak display, your goin to get a very dull image, ass for the drapes, ther not always present, lastnight some images had drapes and some didnt, I was shooting continuesly and with the same settings at one stage, and all of a sudden I was getting the drapes for a few shots and then they were gone, same settings, in the images that had the drapes the colour were stronger as the activity had increased, I had also tried. Faster shutter speeds, and just got dull shots, id like to try film photography on it, id imagine it would give great reat results

Aurora are funny animals , having witness several going back to the 1990's, I find that most of them are faint, little or no colour and look like light pollution glow or car headlight glow as said above, sometimes very faint reds and greens are visible, all are misleadingly more prominent in photographs.

If you want to see something similar to what you see in the best pics, you need to do what a few in the club here did earlier this year and head up to somewhere like Tromso.
You can get lucky and witness that that one in 20 year event like the Halloween storms in 2003. I'll never forget it, but because of it, I dont feel the need to travel to see them , unlike with solar eclipses.. .