Northern lights in Finland

Taking pictures of the northern lights has always been on my to-do list, but I've never traveled to the right place at the right time.

Luckily, on my trip to the center of Finland in August 2013 (wrong place, wrong time), out of the blue, the northern lights came to visit me. I was chilling at Enonjärvi lake and I noticed some greenish tone in the sky. Since it was visible only with the tail of the eye I wasn't sure if it was some weird eye trick or something was really happening in the sky, so I went back to the cabin and asked my friend to borrow me his camera (Fujifilm x100). 

When I returned by the shore I took some long exposed pictures: the northern lights were real! After a few minutes it was clearly visible eye-naked so I looked for a place where I could put the camera still and started shooting like a maniac. The settings I used for most of these pictures were f/2.8 (max aperture), ISO 800 with 15 second exposure. Lowering the ISO and increasing the shutter speed, with the northern lights moving rapidly and changing shape, isn't a good idea since all you get is a green sky, so my advice is bring a bright lens, preferably below f/2.0, and a camera that supports high ISO without too much noise. A fast shutter speed around 5 seconds can make the difference: in my case 15 seconds was ok.