Aurora Borealis Warnings for Wensday thru Friday.

[Paul]

Acccording to these Guys There is to be some fantastic Northern lights due to a solar explosion yesterday on the sun. according to the forcast Friday is the Big Day with a "EXTREME 6+" forcast level. Get your batteries charged and your tripods out.

[Paul]

Here is an excerpt I posted Face Book for our Camera Club. It gives some insite into shooting Northern Lights. The information I will post here is my opinion and based on my experiences shooting in Low light. I am sure there will be differing opinions but I have found this info to work.

Enjoy

Aurora Borealis

There are many things to remember about shooting the Northern Lights. First you will need the following pieces of equipment: Tripod, Camera, Extra Memory Cards, Extra Batteries, Remote Off Camera Shutter Release, Window Tripod, and patience.

I highly recommend that you venture far from town, towards the north. I like to go up by Felton, MN. You will need to get out of the light pollution put off by cities such as Fargo-Moorhead, Hillsboro, Casselton, Glyndon, Hawley, DL, pretty much anything bigger than a few hundred people will put off lots of nasty light pollution. I suggest 30-40 miles North EAST of Fargo into MN. I say Minnesota because in Mayville ND, there is the Largest Free Standing Manmade structure in the world also known as the CH4 TV Tower which is covered in lights also.

For actually shooting I prefer BULB mode, which is a fully Manual Mode were you control the length of shutter opening with the remote trigger. I will also use the mirror lock up function on my camera to help with vibrations. I find an infinite focus point, then place lenses in manual focus mode so I can accidently change it. Set your ISO to 100 and aperture to around F7, it will take some experimentation to find out the best F-stop and ISO, though I use 100 almost exclusively in the dark, for less grain in my images. Placing Camera on Tripod, and pointing it to the sky I use my trigger switch to take images with various shutter times from a few seconds to a few minutes. You have to be careful not to keep the shutter on a DSLR camera open too long (more than 5+ minutes maybe longer) as you will heat up the sensor and cause noise and distortion, not to mention it will be hard on your battery life.

I usually start with an exposure time of 5 seconds then check my LCD viewfinder for the image to see my results; this will tell me if I need more or less exposure time. The longer the exposure time, the more light activity you will receive on your sensor and the better the image. I have taken shots that in BULB mode that have had exposure time of 7 minutes in the dark for some amazing results, and star trails also.

I usually try to go with my widest angle lenses so I get more real-estate into my image, but I have also used my 100mm macro for the f2.8 qualities and have tried my 400mm on the moon.

Make sure you also have your car interior lights all off and the engine off as well, that way you won’t get any vibration from the car engine as you sit in the dark. I use a window style clamp tripod that clamps to my window therefore I don’t have to get out in the dark which allows me to keep an eye on potential oncoming traffic and free range sasquatch’s who get awful mad during The Northern Lights.

Have Fun and post some images for us to see

©Paul Hagen 2012©

[ccarlson]

I just started another thread about this. Must have just missed your post so I'll delete it. I was just wondering about where to start with exposure settings etc. so this is great.

I heard this could be nearly as good of a show as Nov. 2004. I was deer hunting in far northern MN that year and I'll never forget the northern lights.

ccarlson

[Dbl]

Paul some good information in your post. If I might make a few different suggestions. I don't use bulb mode personally unless I am shooting long exposures, in excess of what your camera is capable of in manual mode. Typically that is anything in excess of 30 seconds.

I like to shoot manual mode and set the ISO at 100 and f8.0. I generally don't like exposures longer than 20 seconds so I don't get movement of stars. I prefer a pin point sharp point of light for stars, not a slight blur you will find with more than 20sec. exposures. The only changes I make shooting at night are to adjust ISO, I leave the exposure time and aperture alone. If I want more ambient light I adjust the ISO up. I have found some of the best borealis shots were at 1600 ISO. In many cases the higher the ISO the more brilliant those lights look. This is highly dependent on your location and how much stray light comes into the equation.

I have shot star trails for up to 2 hours with no issues to the camera or sensor. I do turn off long exposure noise reduction, that can greatly affect battery life as well as your write time to the card. The heating up of a sensor has only been an issue shooting video in my experience and that was shooting during the day at high outside temps for long periods of time.

I haven't had much luck shooting from a window mount on a car for night shots. Just you slightly moving in the car will cause blur in your shots. The camera mounted on solid ground with a good tripod will give you good results. I have even found heat from the interior of the car causing distortion of your shots. I shoot with Pocket Wizards so I can have the camera mounted on a tripod at least 20 to 30 yards away from a vehicle. This allows me to stay in the car away from bugs or cold and shoot.

I've also shot using intervals with a second camera, a time lapse which will fire the camera say every 5 minutes. This requires no input from me except for adjustment of exposures. I normally find the exposure I want and then set up the interval and let a camera fire away. I shoot small JPEG and then stitch them together for a really cool time lapse.

The only problem with this solar storm will be the timing of it. This one might be very difficult to get a good shot of because we have a full moon on the 8th. This will likely have a huge impact on capturing any borealis. I will be flying home tomorrow night from the west coast and hope to get a great view from 41,000 feet!

[Paul]

Hey Dan, thanks for the extra Input, I didnt know the pocket wizard could fire the camera. Will all models do that? If so, I may have to spend some more money this year i guess, darn.

Also the reason I use bulb, is so I can just try random exposure times without having to change the camera settings, expecially since the camera may be on a tripod outside the closed car, if not on a window, it depends on which way I can siturate my pickup.

Last night I saw nothing, due to clouds, tonight in the valley is supposed to supposed to be colder the heck so Its hard to say if I will get out tonight, I was supposed to work tommorow but I managed to wiggle out of work.

[Dbl]

Paul, The Plus II's and Multimax along with the new Plus III's will do a remote fire assuming you have the correct pre-trigger. I do a fair amount of remote work so I have had extensive trails and tribulations with them. Some of the Plus II's had a glitch in firmware that prevented them from remote firing but anything in the last few years should work correctly.

I saw no aurora last night due to the full moon. It was an absolutely fantastic moon rise last night from 45,000 feet over the Dakota's as I came into Minneapolis though. Sounds like another storm is hitting so we may see extended activity through the weekend.

[ccarlson]

Might consider driving up to Squaw Lake north of the Grand Rapids area tonight (Friday) if there is a chance of a good light show to photograph. Can anyone give a report if they have actually seen any activity on Thursday night?

We have a hunting camp up there that would make a good setting but I hate to drive 2 hours for nothing.

I have report requests out on the Grand Rapids area forums as well.

ccarlson

[Dbl]

Found some info in the Duluth paper. Article Here

Sounds like the good stuff kicked off around midnight. The moon was indeed an issue but being lower in the sky toward morning might might make things workable.

[Jim Uran]

I saw a ton of activity around midnight last night. I'm about 50 miles west of Bemidji. If the moon wasn't out it would have been even better.