Originally posted by GeoJerry These are really cool! The second one especially, because I really like that you can see the clouds blocking both a bit of the aurora lights and also the relatively bright parts of the night sky. I also like seeing the Pleaides (sp?) What is the bright white light at the bottom left center?
I agree with Matt, I'd do a bit of cropping. A halo around #1 but leaving lots of stars, and a bottom strip off #2.
Excellent effort. I've never shot an aurora. How long did you leave the lens open, and what aperture/ISO? Was it trial and error?
I'll definitely go back and play with the shots. The bright light I think ended up a guest house or building. I honestly don't remember on that one. We had gone out to the spot during the daylight hours. It was our first day out on the road, and we weren't yet comfortable wandering in the night and were a bit worried about getting lost. In hindsight, I would have made an attempt at driving uphill on that volcano on the end of that peninsula (I don't remember the name).
As for the exposure, I believe I was using f4 for the aperture, the ISO tended to be around 400-1600, and the exposure time was around 10 sec for the two above. Unfortunately, it was trial and error, more than I had expected. I thought I had researched quite a bit via Flickr, this forum, some canon forums, etc, but I ended up needing about twice the exposure I'd seen elsewhere. Perhaps people purposely underexpose a bit elsewhere and gain it back in PP. I have to say that on other nights, I was getting shots where the exposure time was down to 1-2 sec at ISO 800 and other nights I needed 20-30 sec. While those shots make for star trails, the trails hardly distract when the main focus is the lights. I was typically shooting with a wired remote and counting in my head the time. The Aurora move slow enough that I could shoot one shot and quickly adjust for what I needed. If they brightened up, I could just cut the exposure or ISO down. I almost never adjusted the aperture. I probably could have, but I felt I needed all the help I could get. I still wanted to minimize the star trails as much as possible. On some rare occasions I went ahead and shot at ISO 3200, and I have to say that I am highly satisfied with the performance of the camera in those situations. Many people here have shown the K5 to perform well at high ISO, but I am still apprehensive about using them, especially in dark situations.
I am very happy I bought a new tripod before the trip. My previous tripod struggled to remain steady enough for a 5 sec shot let alone a 10-20 sec. That and splurging on a carbon fiber tripod and a higher quality head was a treat. Travel was convenient.
I'll post more this evening. There were at least 3 more nights that we saw the Northern Lights. I only regret that I can't easily go back and see them. PP has helped me learn a bit more about shooting them in terms of how to process them, and I think I could even do better. I'm actually considering a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska in the not to distant future since it is a lot closer to California than Iceland and probably cheaper to visit.