Aurora In The Mountains + Tips

Here are a few shots from a cold night camping in the mountains. We stayed up all night watching the lights dance in the sky until the clouds rolled in. I wanted to share a few tips for shooting the Aurora and I've linked my comprehensive guide at the end of this post. There are a few major aspects you'll want to pay attention to.

Focus

If your focus is off any noise and imperfections in the image will be amplified. When shooting at night you will want to focus as close to infinity as possible. With some lenses designed for astro the infinity focus is exactly infinity. To ensure your focus is as good as possible find the brightest star in the sky and focus on that.

ISO

ISO is how sensitive your camera sensor is to light. The higher the ISO the brighter the image, but also the more noise. Try to keep your ISO as low as possible to produce the cleanest image.

Shutter Speed

When shooting the aurora you will want to keep your shutter speed as fast as possible. Anywhere from one second to eight. The faster the shutter speed, the more detail you will get from the aurora.

Aperture

You will want to use a wide lens with a large aperture to ensure you can use low ISO and faster shutter speeds. f/1.4, f/1.8, and f/2.8 are all viable. I wouldn't use anything past f/2.8 if you can help it, though I have gotten shots with a f/4.5 kit lens. It just depends on how bright the aurora is.

There are many other factors that can affect your photo but those are just a few of the main ones.

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1600 - 3 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1000 - 6 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1600 - 3 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1600 - 3 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1600 - 3 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 1600 - 6 sec-

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-f/2.8 - ISO 640 - 8 sec-

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Thank you for reading and supporting my work! If you want more information about shooting the aurora you can check out my comprehensive guide Here! or check out @dimitri0610 who does some incredible astro photography and even has a real time video of the aurora on his page! If you found this information useful or you liked the photos consider resteeming to help share my work :)

Chase