Aurora Hunting Part 5 – How to photograph it

This is Part 5 of my aurora-hunting info-dump, and this post is designed to help you figure out the best ways to take photographs of the aurora.

First of all, lets cover what to think about if you want to quickly point your camera at a light in the sky to see if it is the aurora. If you have an astrophotography mode on your phone, just use that – it will take about a minute to take the full image, but you will probably be able to see if it is green after 10-30 seconds. If you have a normal camera, I recommend using an ISO of around 5000 and a 5 second exposure. This should be more than enough to show up green if the aurora is there, but you will probably need to fine-tune your settings for nice photos, depending on the camera and conditions.

Over the years, I have used 4 different cameras to photograph the aurora:

1. A Canon Powershot A640 – a great little camera with lots of functionality, but not the best sensor, so photos taken in the dark are often kind of grainy. Unfortunately, Canon don’t make this kind of model any more.
2. A Canon Powershot G1X – an older model than the A640, but more powerful and with a great sensor that takes better photos in the dark.
3. A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72 – a camera I mostly use for the superzoom function, but it has manual exposure control and various starry sky modes.
4. My Pixel 3a camera-phone.

In general, the better quality (i.e. more expensive) the sensor, the better quality night time, and thus aurora, photos you can take. Lower quality sensors need to receive more light to not make really grainy images. Having said that, camera technology moves on pretty quickly, and a lot of the mid-range cameras nowadays are probably more than adequate.

There are 5 main settings to be aware of when you are using a camera in manual mode to photograph the aurora:

1. Aperture – this is also known as the f-stop or f-number. In general, the smaller the number, the bigger the hole. Changing the aperture changes the depth of field and what the camera can focus on. We don’t need to worry too much about that for aurora photos, so I recommend just picking the smallest f-stop you have to let in as much light as possible.
2. ISO – this is the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor. Bigger numbers are more sensitive, so capture more light, but produce images that aren’t very sharp. That isn’t really a problem for the aurora because it isn’t a sharp and well-defined entity anyway. In general, image graininess increases with ISO, but the better quality sensors don’t start to get problems with graininess until you get to really high ISOs. On my cameras, I have found I get the best auroras at ISOs between 800 and 8000, but this will probably vary from camera to camera.
3. Exposure time / shutter speed – this is how long the shutter stays open for. Longer exposures allow more light into the camera, but also increase motion blur. Long exposures need a tripod, or at least something to rest your camera on. Exposures as short as 15 seconds can even produce star trails – where the stars in the image are elongated because they are moving across the sky with the Earth’s rotation. The optimum exposure time will probably depend on what the aurora is doing and what kind of photo you want. If it is really active and dancing, you could choose shorter exposures to try and capture the different features; or you could use a long exposure and let all the dancing blur into a brilliant splash of colour. I generally find that shutter speeds of between 3 and 8 seconds are best.
4. Focus – a lot of cameras struggle to focus in the dark, and it is so easy to get home after a night’s viewing and realise that all of your images are out of focus. Manual focus is your friend here – just focus to infinity and you are good to go.
5. White balance – modern cameras tend to adjust how they process the image depending on what they think the light source is. For example, sunny, cloudy, and fluorescent light sources all produce different coloured light, and if the camera doesn’t correct for this adequately, it makes all the colours look a bit off. I’m still experimenting with the best white balance options and don’t have any advice here, other than to try changing your white balance settings if you think your green aurora is too blue or yellow, or your pink aurora is too red or purple.

If you are wondering where to find and adjust all those settings… I find the easiest way is to use the “Tv” mode which lets you control shutter speed. The camera automatically selects the aperture (Av) and because it is dark it will just pick the largest aperture it can. ISO will be accessed via one of your camera menus, or you might have a dedicated button for it. Same for manual focus and white balance.

You might also want to either use a cable release or a 2 second timer to take the photo. Even if you have the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod, it will move slightly when you push the button. If there are any bright lights in the field of view, they will probably show that movement up on the image (you can see these light streaks in Photo #12 below).

If you have a camera that has a night-time or starry-sky mode, this will usually let you choose between a 15 second or 30 second exposure, and select the highest ISO that it can.

Smartphone cameras often have a night-mode, that uses a higher ISO, and sometimes a starry-sky or astrophotography mode. On the Pixel 3a, you get to the astrophotography mode by selecting night mode, and then making sure the camera is immobile. When it hasn’t detected movement for a few seconds it automatically switches to astrophotography mode. From what I can tell, this sets the ISO to ~800, and takes a series of 4-second exposures, over a 60 second period, that it then kind of adds together to make a single image. It means you get the same amount of light as a 60 second exposure, but without the star-trails, because each image is lined up to compensate for the movement. I find this takes more vibrant aurora photos than my other cameras, and is easier to quickly set up (as long as I can get the camera still enough). But be warned – if you want to get a selfie with the aurora, you need to stay put for the full 60 seconds, otherwise the processing that stacks the photos together will probably decide you are some kind of anomaly and just leave you out of the photo. If it is a strong display, the aurora might be bright enough for you to stop the photo after a few seconds, instead of waiting the full minute, so you can capture more of the individual features.

Photo #11 (left): Pixel 3a – astrophotography mode – f/1.8, around 14 stacked 4 second exposure images, ISO 802. Photo #12 (right) Canon Powershot G1X –  f/3.5, 6 seconds, ISO-800

Above I’ve posted 2 photos of the same aurora, taken a few minutes apart, and with different cameras. The left one is using the astrophotography mode on my Pixel 3a. The colours are really vibrant here and you can see the pink aurora at the top. The swirl above the chimney was quite active during this photo, and that has translated to a bright mass of colour that is difficult to see the structure in. The photo on the right was taken with my Powershot G1X with just a 6 second expsosure. This means the image isn’t as bright or vibrant, as it received less light, but you can see the structure of that swirl better than on the other image. Overall, the aurora has more of a yellow-tinge compared to the other photo – this will be because of a different white balance. You can also see how there is a colour change within the swirly curtain, that you can’t see on the Pixel image. The other thing I like about my Powershot is that I can zoom in and take photos that are more close up.

Getting the photos you want will always involve a lot of trial and error and getting to know your camera, but hopefully this is a good start for you.

If you have your own hints and tips for taking photos of the aurora, please share them in the comments.

Next: Apps and tools to help you in your hunt.