Photographing the Aurora Borealis

Where and When

Northern lights are some of the hardest natural phenomenons to photograph. The main challenge is, that you never know if, when and where they will be visible. While there are places with higher probabilities for experiencing the aurora borealis, truth is, you just don‘t know. There are useful smartphone apps like „Aurora“ that help you judge your chances, if the northern lights might make an appearance. While this is still no guarantee, it sure helps. …and obviously, you‘ll need a clear sky.

Generally speaking, there is a belt close to the Arctic Circle (north) and one close to the Antarctic Circle (south) where the aurora borealis (north) or the aurora australis (south) can be experienced. Since the Arctic is more accessible than Antarctica, it‘s probably easier to try your luck in the north.

In summer, the midnight sun will prevent you from seeing the northern lights. Therefore, always check the sunset and sunrise times for your destination. As a rule of thumb, the longer the night, the more chances you have to see the aurora. And the earlier the sunset, the better the chances, that the northern lights will be visible at a decent time.

Some people think that the northern lights will most likely appear after midnight. Technically, this might be true, since most part of the night is after midnight. However, there is no bigger chance of seeing the aurora at 1 am than at 10 pm. Others are convinced, that the aurora will more likely be visible on a cold night. Again, there‘s no link between the surface temperature of the earth and the likelihood of seeing the aurora. However, the air tends to have less humidity in winter, therefore offering a clearer view. And nights will be longer in winter, increasing your odds.

It Will Be Dark And Cold

Per definition, it‘s going to be cold and dark where the northern lights will be visible. The good news is, you can easily prepare for both.

Photographing in the cold requires some precautions and preparations (see Cold Weather Photography). Besides protecting your camera gear, it‘s also a good idea to take good care of yourself. Bring warm, layered clothes, warm winter boots and enough hand and foot warmers to keep you warm, especially when photographing during the Arctic winter. A word of caution: Remember not to touch any freezing cold surfaces (like camera bodies or lenses) with your bare skin (esp. cheeks and nose…).

The darkness requires some preparations as well. Sure, your camera display will be lit up. But do you really know all the buttons and dials of your camera well enough, to be able to operate it in complete darkness? Bringing a flashlight is always a good idea. Make sure that the flashlight is either mounted on a headstrap or has a clip to attach it to your jacket. Otherwise, chances are that your gloved hands will drop either your camera or your flashlight, or both.

A flashlight can also be used for light painting. If you are a group of people, briefly illuminating a building, a tree or a person might allow for fascinating photos. Just remember not to disturb fellow photographers with your flashlight.

Camera Settings

For best results, you‘ll need a camera that can be set to an all manual mode (often „M“). Even if you normally use some kind of automatic setting, you should change to manual mode for photographing the aurora. While newer camera bodies usually feature more advanced technology and therefore better image quality, having the latest gear is not required for perfect aurora shots.

The first challenge is the autofocus. In complete darkness, most likely, your camera AF won‘t work. Therefore, you‘ll have to use manual focusing. If you already know where you‘ll be photographing the northern lights during the day, you could set your focus to manual before dark and fix it using a scotch tape. Or if your camera features a digital distance scale, you could just remember the exact number and dial that in manually at night.

Especially with mirrorless cameras, the manual focus will enlarge part of the image to facilitate focusing. If you are used to using this technique, you might be able to correctly focus at the stars, or a slightly illuminated foreground. One word of warning: The infinity position of most lenses is not precisely focusing on infinity. Therefore, even when focusing on the stars, you might not need to be dialing all the way to infinity.

You‘ll want the stars to be spots rather than lines. If your exposure time is too long, the stars will be moving visibly while your shutter is open, resulting in star trails. As a rule of thumb, you can use the „500 rule“. Just divide 500 by your (full frame equivalent) focal length. If you are photographing with a 20mm lens, this would mean 500 : 20 = 25 seconds. While high megapixel cameras are so extremely sharp that even while adhering to this rule, there might be visible star trails.

But not only the stars are moving, but also the aurora borealis. It might not be moving as fast as you have seen in timelapse videos of this phenomenon, but it is moving. Therefore, the shutter speed should be shorter, e.g. 5-10 seconds. To allow enough light to reach your sensor in such a (relatively) short time, you‘ll need to consider your aperture and ISO settings. We‘ll cover the aperture in the next paragraph (lens).

Every camera has a base ISO value (usually 100). At this setting, image quality is best. But in low light situation, keeping the ISO to 100 would require extremely long shutter speeds, resulting in star trails and blurred auroras. Therefore, you‘ll have to increase the ISO value and thereby the light sensitivity of your image sensor. Usually, values up to 1000 or even 2800 will still be producing acceptably sharp photos.

It‘s always a good idea to use the self timer of your camera to prevent camera shake from pressing the shutter. We usually use 2 seconds, but you might even use the 5 seconds setting.

And one last tip: Consider shooting in RAW format. While in many situation, a JPEG file will be fine, RAW files leave you more options for postprocessing (e.g. in Adobe Lightroom).

Lens

The aurora borealis often spans the entire sky. Therefore, you‘ll want to use a wide angle lens. The focal length is calculated for full frame sensors. If you are using a camera with a smaller sensor, e.g. APS-C, you‘ll have to multiply the focal length with the „crop factor“ of 1.5 to get your actual focal length. For example, if you are using a 20mm lens on an APS-C camera, it will take similar photos as a 30mm lens on a full frame camera (20 x 1.5 = 30mm). Or if you would really want to take a 20mm photo on an APS-C camera, you would need a 13mm lens.

We have successfully photographed the aurora borealis with focal lengths between 12 and 35mm. The ideal focal lengths are probably somewhere between 12 and 20mm.

Your lens should be as fast as possible. We would consider the minimum aperture for aurora shooting to be f/2.8. If you are using a prime lens (fixed focal length), your aperture might be as low as f/1.8 or even f/1.4. The lower the number, the better, since a lower number means more light on the sensor. And more light means a shorter shutter speed and/or a lower ISO value. This is all contributing to a cleaner image. With this in mind, you can still take reasonably good aurora shots with an aperture of f/4 or higher.

Tripod

No matter how steady you can hold your camera, you won‘t be able to handhold night photos. Shutter times between 5 and 10 seconds always require a tripod. Since it might be windy in the Arctic, be sure to bring a sturdy tripod. Every tripod has a maximum weight that it’s tested with. We recommend using a tripod that is rated substantially higher than the actual weight of your camera. A flimsy tripod will be ruining all of your shots.

If you happen to be traveling the Arctic on a ship, a tripod won‘t help you. Even anchored, a ship is constantly moving. Photographing the aurora from a ship is never going to render tack sharp images. However, you might still try to get some decent shots. They might not be your best photos, but experiencing the aurora borealis is such a special treat that you‘ll want to take home some memories anyway.

Please note, that even a wooden deck of a building can shake enough to ruin your shots. Therefore, especially when photographing as a group, be mindful of your fellow photographers.

Smartphones

Modern smartphones are amazing at capturing photos at night. While regular cameras can still produce clearer, crisper night photos, you should definitely also try using your smartphone. There are even situations, where a smartphone is your best option for photographing the aurora:
- You might not have any other camera ready.
- You might not be comfortable using your camera at night in the cold in all manual mode.
- It might be too windy to set up a tripod.
- You might just want to enjoy the moment and not worry about camera settings.
In any case, to achieve good results, remember to set your smartphone camera to night mode (often, this happens automatically), turn off the flash and try to hold your phone as still as possible while shooting.

Summary

Prepare for the cold.

Bring a flashlight.

Set your camera to full manual mode (ideally while still inside):
Shutter speed 5-10 seconds, as short as possible
ISO 1000 (max. 2800), as low as possible
Aperture as low as possible (f/2.8 or lower)
Manual focus
Set self timer to 2 or 5 seconds to prevent camera shake

Use a tripod, unless you are on a ship.

Enjoy this wonderful experience.