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Iceland Aurora 1
Lens: Tamron 10-24 Camera: Pentax K5 Photo Location: Rif, Iceland 
Posted By: emalvick, 01-14-2013, 08:21 PM

The following photos were my first ever viewing and photographing of the Northern Lights. These were from the 2nd night of our trip and out in Rif, Iceland - near the end of the Snæfellsnes peninsula.


This first image is shot towards the Northwest. The radio tower is apparently an old U.S./NATO installation and the tallest in Iceland(?). The wide angle lens distorts it a bit.




This second image is shot more towards the North. The town of Rif, a small fishing village is the reason for all the lights in the distance. The darkness in this region of Iceland makes it easy to see a lot of the night sky, but it also makes a village such as that one stand out. I couldn't do a whole lot to avoid the village besides shoot in the direction above.




I took a chance at photographing the Aurora every chance I got. It was cloudy this night initially, but the clouds cleared up right after sunset. I never knew whether I'd see the lights again. Rain was forecast for every day on our trip, but thankfully we were able to see the Northern Lights for 5 days on the front portion of our two week trip.

These images were kind of neat because you could also make out URSA Major (The Big Dipper) and the Pleiades (the seven sisters). Of course, if you click in you'll see that the long exposure created some star trails, and you can also see what appears to be either faint meteors or perhaps some satellites moving across the second image (you can click the images for the fulls size). They aren't the best quality images. It took a day or two of practice to get shots I was happy with. But the lights were beautiful to see, and I'm so happy to have witnessed them in person.
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01-14-2013, 10:16 PM   #2
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Wow, what a view! Nice photos! Definitely a meteor visible in shot 2 to the right of the right-most green stripe. I've gone to some effort to photograph meteors and that pointy shape of the trail makes it look like the real thing and not a satellite.
With the foreground all black it might be worth cropping some or most of it off or recovering some detail to provide a little foreground if possible.
01-14-2013, 10:50 PM   #3
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Thanks for the confirmation. I think I also noticed one in the first image off to the left. They were never bright enough to see with my eyes, but I was distracted by the lights... I did attempt to brighten up the foreground, but it was rather ugly in that spot and a little too under-exposed, so consciously left it black, although cropping it could be a benefit. I got a little more out of the foreground in the nights that follow (will add some more), and they look nice. I'll get to some more in the next few days.
01-14-2013, 10:58 PM   #4
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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?

01-15-2013, 04:46 AM   #5
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Thumbs up ! I so want to be able to take a shot of these. Excellent.
01-15-2013, 08:21 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by GeoJerry Quote
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.
01-15-2013, 09:26 AM   #7
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I'd love to shoot them sometime too! They are extremely rare to see here in central Colorado so I'd have to head North.
I find that exposures of 20 seconds or less will minimize star trails and on the K-5 ISO 3200 is very usable with a little bit of NR in LR4. I also shoot as wide open (or close to it) as possible when shooting night skies.

01-15-2013, 12:55 PM   #8
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wow, gorgeous!

agree with mattb123, cropping foreground could make difference
01-15-2013, 02:55 PM   #9
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I love that stuff.Thanks for sharing.--charliezap
01-15-2013, 06:15 PM   #10
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Thanks for all the comments and feedback. I'll work on those photos... I honestly hadn't done much with them because there were a few others from later days that turned out fantastically and I have been focusing on them. They're probably a day or two from posting here.
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