Photographing the Night Sky (or how to capture the Aurora when it’s not

cloudy or blowing a gale) By Mark Appleton

Winter Lecture Series 2017

GairlochHeritageMuseum

Please note the following information I’m about to share is what I’ve picked up over the years either form other photographers, mistakes I’ve made and adjustments to settings/techniques to get the best image. Under no circumstances is my method the correct and only way, its just the way I take my shots, you never stop learning.

Mark Appleton

DISCLAIMER!!

Where to fi nd out when the Aurora is happening

I use the following apps and websites to fi nd out when the aurora is on:

www.spaceweather.com

www.softservenews.com

www.aurora-service.eu/aurora-forecast/

Also Facebook and Apps such as Aurora, Northern Eye Aurora

Don’t expect to see vivid greens and bright reds you see in the pictures to follow. Our eyes can only take in certain amount of light and we just can’t see that much colour in the night sky (unless its an intense Aurora).

What to expect with an Aurora?

What we see What the camera sees

They give aurora storms a Planetary K-index to describe the possible intensity (a bit like Hurricanes) the higher the ‘K-index’ the more chance we’ll see it. A Kp 3 you would see a grey glow on the horizon with your eyes, but the camera would pick up the green colour. KP 4-5 more chance of seeing a dancing aurora or colour towers, KP6-7 or more and you would be able to make out the colours, although not as vivid as the camera would capture, it would also be overhead or further South.

What to expect with an Aurora?

KP3 KP4-5 KP6-7

Aurora displays appear in various colours although green, pink and red are the most common. The aurora appear in di� erent forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays.

1. You really need a DSLR/mirrorless camera to capture the aurora as compact cameras tend not to have longer shutter speeds of more than 10 secs or fast lenses, plus due to the chip size produce really noisy images. Full frame camera generally have better noise control than APS-C size cameras (1.5 or 1.6 crop).

2. Fast lens, preferably F2.8 or lower, but you can get away with F4 depending on how bright the aurora is. Wide angle lens to capture the night sky, 16mm or 14mm, although you can get decent shots with 24/28mm on full frame or 10mm to 12mm or 16-18mm on APS-C size chips (1.5 or 1.6 crop). Manual lenses are great as you’ll be unable to use autofocus.

3. Sturdy tripod especially when doing such long exposures. Avoid using the column extension to gain height.

4. Cable release with an interval timer either cable or wireless are great for doing time lapse photography. You can set the delay/exp/interval between shots and amount of pictures you want to take. I’ll get more into time lapse later. You’ll also want to make sure it has a bulb lock, so when you press the button its locks so you can leave the camera or your not having to keep your thumb press down for 45 secs which can become a pain.

Camera equipment

Full Frame Sensor Nikon FX, Canon EF, Sony FE

35mm

24mm

APS-C Nikon DX, Sony E, Pentax = 1.5x crop

Canon EF-S = 1.6x cropFour Thirds = 2x Crop

1/2.5” Compact Camera

1. Set camera to Manual2. Shutter speed. Bulb normally more than 30 seconds, but you also want to avoid

star trails. If its a strong aurora try a lower shutter speed 30 sec/15 secs

3. F-Stop F2.8 or the max aperture. If a bright aurora try to stop down a couple of stops so the lens performance improves.

4. Single shot on drive options or 2 secs self timer delay if you don’t have a cable release.

5. ISO. Start at 1,600 and work up if needed, try to keep as low as possible, avoid 6,400 or above, unless you’ve got a top end camera.

6. I normally leave WB on auto as I change it in Lightroom, but Daylight normally works OK.

7. Quality setting: RAW or RAW plus JPEG (highest quality).

Camera Settings

8. Turn off Long Exposure NR Your camera will take another blank exposure and then merges both getting rid of any hot spots. Great, but takes valuable time.

9. Turn Off High ISO NR (if possible). Its better to do noise reduction in post production. Unless you don’t have any software, then try to keep High ISO NR to low, this only applies to JPEG not RAW fi les.

How to capture the Aurora

Nikon Canon Sony

10. Set the lens to infi nity (Pre focus in daylight and mark lens) A lot of kit lenses don’t have a distance scale and don’t show where infi nity is,

so what I recommend is focus your camera on a distant object in daylight, then put a small piece of white tape on the focus barrel so you be able to see it when shooting at night, when focusing manually.

11. Turn off any in-camera or lens stabilisation otherwise you’ll get a blurred image.

How to capture the Aurora

Processing images - Lightroom

Library Screen

Processing images - Lightroom

Develop Screen

ISO 6400 No Noise reduction Noise reduction: Luminance 30Colour 100Don’t sharpen your images too much as this will make the noise stand out

Noise reduction: Luminance 100 (way too much)Colour 100

Processing images - Noise

1. You will defi nitely need a programmable cable release (intervalometer) either cable or wireless. You will need to set the delay/exposure/interval/amount of shots required.

2. If shooting through a window make sure you mask your camera with a dark cloth, so you don’t have any refl ections on the glass.

3. Tape over any lights that appear on the camera when taking a shot.

4. You’ll need either a vertical hand grip that takes 2 batteries or a power bank battery.

5. If shooting outside make sure your camera is warmly packed up and just the lens braving the elements. Put a shock on your lens to keep it warm too. Dew heaters are useful too.

6. Set the camera as I showed earlier, but put the drive option on continuous.

7. Make sure you have a large capacity memory card, 32GB min (pref 64GB) with plenty of blank space on it, enough to take 800 shots. Also try to use a card with decent transfer speed of at a least 80MB/s.

Time Lapse Videos

8. Take the fi rst image, check that everything is straight in focus and the correct exposure, then set the timer going again, making sure it takes the following shot a few times.

9. Hopefully when you return you should have around 500 to 800 shots or so depending on the time of year. 25 shots = 1 second of video = 500 shots = 20 secs of video.

10. You will then need to bring you shots into Lightroom, you will then make all your adjustments on the fi rst image and then sync it with the rest of the photos so they all have the same settings. Make sure you change the format to 16x9 (TV screen size).

Time Lapse Videos

10. Then you need to export your images, its best to do them no bigger than 1920 pixels wide as HD1080 is 1920 x 1080. Its also best to change the fi le name so the sequence doesn’t change, just in case you deleted some pictures due to car lights or a blank picture, otherwise it won’t open in Photoshop.

Time Lapse Videos

11. Open Photoshop, go to the folder in which you saved all your images, select the fi rst image, then in the Options Box click on Image Sequence.

12. Hopefully your Time Lapse will be created, just play it, you can change the speed by reducing the frame speed.

Time Lapse Videos

11. Then export the fi le (Render Video), bring up a new window with various options, take you pick which you prefer, I normally save it HD1080i 25.

Time Lapse Videos

You can use the images you’ve created for the Time Lapse video to make a Star Trail image, it does seem to work best if you have the camera pointing at the North Star.

Star Trail images

1. I use Photoshop for this process, fi rst go to File, scroll down to Scripts, then select Statistics

Star Trail images

2. Then go fi nd the folder with the images in (make sure the number sequence is correct).

3. Select all the images, make sure Maximum is selected in Stack Mode at the top of the dialogue box. DO NOT CLICK ‘ALIGN SOURCE IMAGES’.

4. Then go make yourself a coff ee or run a bath, it’ll take a while for all the images to load and complete the fi nished image.

Star Trail images

To see my aurora and night time images please check out:

www.markappletonphotography.com

© Mark Appleton

Winter Lecture Series 2017

GairlochHeritageMuseum