Why

It has been a lot of northern lights lately. They are getting more frequent and intense and I just can't miss these light shows.

Here I've decided to try to share some tips on how to shoot it.

Planning

Whatever you are going to use to take your pictures, you still need to find the correct time and place.

Time

This is relatively easy. There are quite a lot of apps that alert you about an upcoming aurora activity. It's better though to find something location specific.

I use 2 main sources, this website: rwc-finland.fmi.fi and this TG channel: Aurora Hunters. The amount of info they give might be overwhelming, but it's safe to ignore it and just react to the red marks (on the web site).

Place

This is a bit more complicated. Ideally, you're looking for a lone mountain with a 360 degree view of the sky, which is located in some really dark place. So, the Orodruin might be a good choice. But if you don't live close enough to Mordor, it might be somewhat challenging.

So, lets first try to find a place dark enough.

Here's the map: lightpollutionmap. I'm not a fan of their color scheme, but the data is extremely useful. What we're looking for is a place that is not too bright AND there's nothing too bright northward from that place. Obviously, the further from civilization you get, the darker it is.

But you actually don't need a complete darkness, auroras can be seen (I mean, seen by your camera) even with some lights in the foreground:

Auroras, despite being "northern" lights, are not guaranteed to be directly on the north - actually, the more intense they are, the more random their position is. It may vary both in direction and distance from the horizon - there were several times I've seen it right above my head, like that one:

You are going to need a nice, unobstructed view at least to the north. Why "at least?"

because this image is shot nearly directly eastward.

If there's a whole city to the north of some nice place you've found, the place might be useless.

There's a bird-watching tower, that is really high and has a great view, but it's right to the south from Espoo (despite it not being a "real" city, it is still rather bright).

Unless you have some real mountains (and able to climb them) nearby, just getting on top of some hill is not going to help you if the top of said hill is covered in trees, or is surrounded by lights, as shown above.

So, in the mountainless place I live in, I've found 3 ways to get the view we need:

• Lakes

• Fields

• Bird-watching towers

There's a lot of lakes in Finland, but not any will do. First of all, it needs to be long enough along the meridian. By "enough" I mean at least 1 km long.

In addition, you need to be able to actually stand on it's southern shore - you don't want to mount your tripod in some swamp (ok, you might want, but I don't find it so amusing).

If you're shooting in the middle of the winter it might be less of a problem, since lakes tend to freeze.

A field might be a good choice as well, though they are typically smaller than lakes and have more light pollution from lampposts (see the 1st image - taken across the field).

Finally, bird-watching tower is sometimes a good option. The problem is that they are typically not high enough to be above all the trees around. Another issue might be it's location - as noted above, one of the highest towers has a bad location, though it allows to make some nice sunset pics.

So, once you have found the place and got an alert of the aurora activity, you can pack your stuff and go take some pics. But what is that you have to pack?

Gear

If you're ok with just pointing your phone in the sky and letting it try to make it's best - just skip this part, it's boring.

Still here?

I shoot with my DSLR which is a Canon EOS 60D, so I'll be describing it, your results may vary.

Lens

First of all, you're going to need a rather wide lens - all the aurora pics above are shot with my EF-S 10-22mm, mostly dialed all the way to 10. Sometimes I'd like to have even wider angle, but such a lens will be hardly usable for anything else.

Tripod

You're going to need one. A tall one will be easier to use, especially in the snow. It's better if it is adjustable, since you will need to be able to point your camera in different directions.

Settings

This, as well, might be different for you, since cameras and lens are different, but here's some findings.

Exposure time. Originally, I thought it needs to be as high as possible, but it was a mistake. You see, auroras "move" (not like clouds, they disappear in one place and appear in some another) and they do it fast enough to appear too blurry. Therefore, I've realized that 5s time is good enough. Make it longer and you'll get blurry colorful mess, make is shorter and you'll miss some stars in the background.

ISO. Should be as low as possible to reduce the noise. For me 800 works fine.

Timer. Do not forget about this feature: you don't want the camera to be moved during the shot, so set a timer (2s is enough) so that it will make a shot in 2s after you release the shutter button.

Editing

You didn't think these images are not edited, right?

Here is an unedited version of the 3rd image. Yes, my tripod was standing sideways, I know.

Apart from making it straight, you might want to increase contrast and saturation of greens and purples or make other adjustments. Anyway, this requires you to use the RAW format.

You're ready now

Or at least, there's nothing more that I can tell you.

Here's an album where I put my pictures of the sky, including auroras.