coj Loc: NJ, USA

Hi - I will be going to Iceland shortly and hope to get a few shots of the northern lights. I will be using a Nikon D3100 with a brand new AF-s DX 18-300 f/3.5-5.6 G ED VRII lens that I will receive tomorrow, so I have a few days to experiment before I go. I will of course use a tripod. Can anyone recommend the needed settings to use on my camera etc. to try and capture these images. I will probably be shooting from inside a building if it is windy outside, or possibly outside if conditions permit, but there still may be some lights from a building present. Do I need a filter? If so, what kind? Thank you in advance to everyone for their advice. Chris.

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Shooting the northern lights:

Deactivate the camera flash and automatic settings.

Always shoot RAW format - it will give you the most data to work with later. Feel free to shoot JPG at the same time, though, if your camera supports it. Most do.

Focus manually to infinity. Switch off the camera's autofocus to be on the safe side.

Open up the lens aperture. You need to admit a lot of light, so shoot wide open. This will be when the f-number is as low as possible, i.e. f/2.8 or lower for many pro-lenses, or f/3.5 or f/4 for many consumer zooms.

Compose your shot. Remember that the northern lights need scale and context, so include the foreground in your shot. This can be a tree, a building, a car or even just the horizon.

Set the ISO to somewhere between 100 and 400, depending on what you need. The faster your lens and the longer your shutter speed, the lower your ISO can be, and vice versa.

Start with a shutter speed between 4 and 12 seconds, and experiment from there. Avoid longer shutter speeds, as they will tend to blur the northern lights as they move across the sky.

Adjust ISO and/or aperture if necessary.

Keep the camera as still as possible while you are exposing. Use a tripod and a remote trigger if you have one, and the trigger delay function if you do not. Do not touch the camera until it is done exposing, and shield it from the wind if you can.

Enjoy!

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

With a couple of exceptions, you can pretty much follow the advice given by Shellback and be in very good shape!

There is no need to shoot with the lens wide open. Sometimes even f/8 can work. With the lens you have though, at the shortest focal length the widest it goes is f/3.5. Start with it stopped down 1 full fstop to get sharper images. Only if the lights are too dim should you open up farther. You can probably go at least to ISO 800 with no problem, and maybe to 1600 without too much trouble.

Shutter speeds can range from less than 5 seconds all the way out to perhaps 30 seconds. If the lights are very active you'll want shorter exposures to "freeze" the action. That will allow "curtains" to show up. Also shutter speeds longer than about 15 seconds start to show increasing amounts of the earth's rotational movement, giving star trails instead of points of light.

The easiest camera configuration is with everything in manual mode. That includes focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and turning off the flash.

Generally it is more difficult to get good images if there is significant ambient light. But composition is always greatly improved by including something interesting in the foreground. Do a web search and look over a variety of Aurora pictures to get an idea of what types of compositions you like best. The foreground is almost always what makes or breaks pictures of the Aurora.

You'll want to become familiar enough with the concept of hyperfocal distance to put it to use. The camera does not need to be focused at infinity, for example, unless the aperture is very wide. Stopping down a little helps to keep objects in the foreground sharp too.

Below is an interesting example. Shot at f/4 with a shutter speed of 30 seconds and using an ISO of 100. It was taken with a Nikon D2x, so higher ISO values were not useful. A D3200 has less noise at ISO 400 than the D2X at ISO 100, and a D3200 image even at ISO 800 will certainly look better.

(Click here or on the image for a larger view.)

http://apaflo.com/gallery3/d2x_0320.s.jpg.tmb

JPL

This is a bad lens to use for northern lights. You should bring a 50 mm f1.8 or something similar for this. With a f1.8 lens you could set ISO at 2500, aperture at 1.8 and shutter speed at 1/2 second, 1/4 second or maybe faster shutter speed.

Here are 2 pics of northern lights in Iceland, the first one is 4sec, f2.2 and ISO 800 and the second one is 2.5 sec, f2.2 and ISO 1250. Those are not very good but indicate the settings you can use if you have a fast lens and camera with usable high ISO. Those were taken with my phone in very strong wind. I was leaning against a wall to get these, used the car lights to light up the grass in the foreground. Decided to experiment with my phone, wanted to see if northern lights photography was possible with it :?

There is no need for you to use longer exposure than 1-2 sec. unless you want the pic to look like it is taken in bright sunshine, even with your new zoom lens ;)

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Testie Loc: Armidale NSW Australia

My better half is dying to see the "lights" but they are a long way away from us. Had a quick look in Alaska but no luck. So maybe if you post more photos I won't need to fly to the top of the world just in case they are on show.
So far only makes her more determined to see them!

Joecosentino Loc: Whitesboro, New York

Pick up a cable release