Lets start off with your camera. Ideally you want a camera that has very good high ISO performance. Typically these are the full-frame SLR’s such as the Canon 5DmkII or Nikon D700 etc. The reason for this is that each pixel is much larger than with a camera with maybe the same amount of pixels which must cram them into a smaller sensor. Because each pixel needs power and a certain percentage of each pixel site must be dedicated to delivering power to that pixel, there just isn’t enough space left to capture light and we end up with far “noisier” or “grainier” images. I will be talking about the 5DmkII as that is the camera I am using. Keep in mind that just because your camera has a smaller sensor that you can’t capture images of aurora, you can, it’s just there are some limitations. I say go out and try, and if nothing else you will have enjoyed seeing one of the most spectacular natural phenomena’s nature has to provide!

OK, so we know which camera to bring along. What do we do with it to best capture these amazing lights? Because the aurora, at least when the storm is near it’s peak, are moving and pulsing very rapidly, it is necessary to use as short an exposure as is possible in order to record the fine wisps and curtains being observed without blurring them together, which makes them look like a solid curtain of colour. This is caused by the sensor capturing all the movement during your exposure and doesn’t show off your experience to it’s fullest.

Use as high an ISO as you can and still retain a decent quality in your images. I was using ISO 2000 for these images. If you shoot in RAW it is quite simple to remove the noise, although I find that leaving a bit of the noise in my images keeps an aesthetically pleasing reality to them. Anyways, thats me and not you, Use your luminance slider in your RAW converter to your hearts content! High ISO is only part of what’s important. You will also require a fast lens, and when I say fast, I mean really fast, as in the smallest f-number you can afford, such as F1.4, f2.0, even up to f2.8. That said I would only use a “slow” lens like f2.8 if I can shoot it wide open and still retain great quality right into the corners. Many(most) lenses don’t perform all that well  wide open let alone off into the far reaches of the corners of your images! I use the Zeiss ZE 21mm f2.8 which is likely one of the best super-wide angle lenses you can get, just be prepared for the sticker shock as it is not inexpensive. But, it can be used wide open. Sigma also makes some fine wide and super-wide lenses like the 20mm, 24mm and 28mm all with an incredibly fast  f1.8 aperture. Remember what I just said about how some lenses aren’t great wide open – you need to stop these down a couple stops to f2.8 to get your corners sharp. The reason I keep talking about wide and super-wide lenses is just that you need them to capture the huge spectacle that the aurora are. They can easily cover the sky from horizon to horizon as the following image shows. This is a multi image stitch that covers 180 degrees of sky!

Both Canon and Nikon also make high speed prime lenses, such as their 24mm f1.4 lenses. I haven’t mentioned tripod yet, but obviously this type of photography will be impossible without one. You will also be wise to bring a remote so you don’t induce any vibrations in your images from the force used to press the shutter release. You can get around this if your camera has no remote capabilities quite easily. All you need to do is use your self timer which will give you anywhere from 2-10 seconds of delay after pressing the shutter release before the shutter fires.

Your autofocus will not be able to handle this situation, and don’t assume that by racking the focus ring as far as it goes in the direction of the infinity mark that you will in fact be focused at infinity. In fact you most likely will not, and the way to fix the problem is to use the liveview function on your camera. By using this function you can see exactly what your camera is seeing. If your camera has the capability, zoom the preview while in the liveview mode as far as you can and focus on a bright light of a distant farmyard or the moon or a planet if your camera can pick one up. Then be extremely careful not to bump the focus ring and by all means don’t leave your camera in AF as it will just lose your hard earned focus point as soon as you touch the shutter button.

Do your best to find a spot 15-20 km away from any major light sources so the sky is plenty dark. All the images above were made on a night with a very bright moon and so the foreground was well lit which showed up well in the photographs. Of course your foregrounds will not show up this way if the moon is in sliver phase(I’m sure there is a proper term for this phase, but you know what I mean). On a night without much moonlight keep your images interesting by incorporating something to silhouette against the sky and aurora. A road sign, tree, windmill, whatever you happen to have close at hand. Don’t hesitate to shoot when the show is on as sometimes it is very short lived. All the above images were made in under ten minutes and the show was over.

I think that covers most of the photography parts of capturing aurora borealis images, but there is still more to think about before you head out. Usually the aurora occur in and around the spring and fall equinox’s, but can occur almost anytime. Unless you are in the middle of summer and it’s warm out, you will want to prepare for cooler temperatures. In fact, many of the best times to photograph aurora occur in winter which comes along with a decidedly cooler bent to the weather. This means you need to dress appropriately! By appropriately, I mean dress in layers and lots of them. You will mostly be standing still and your body will cool down very quickly when not active. Proper foot ware and something warm to cover your head are extremely important and not to be ignored. It wouldn’t hurt to carry along a foamy and some heavy duty sleeping bags if you want to just spread them out and lay down to simply enjoy the show. A few snacks and plenty of hot coffee or hot chocolate would make the whole experience far more tolerable. A small flashlight will come in super handy and better yet bring one that has a red gel in front of the lens so your night vision isn’t compromised. And lastly some duct tape, no real reason, but the stuff is handy and you never know when you might need some.

Go with a friend or two and be sure you have a cell phone just in case. Enjoy the show!

I thoroughly enjoyed the walk and the company and on top of all that found the little GF2 to be a joy to use. So much smaller than my full size DSLR the Canon 5DmkII, it is a lot of fun to carry the GF2 around with a lens in each jacket pocket with virtually no sense of having been carrying around a camera for a couple of hours!! I found the bokeh to be very pleasing and the sharpness of this to be outstanding. Amazing combination to say the least. i’m sure other cameras may even be easier to use then the mainly menu driven, and touch screen of the Panasonic, and I will likely purchase a different version of this model at some point, but for now I am quite satisfied with this combination.

[Panasonic GF2, Olympus 45mm f/1.8]

[Zero Image 6x9, Fujicolor 400H]

You certainly can’t tell from this photograph that I was standing amongst roughly a hundred tourists who flock to this gorgeous viewpoint to have a photograph of themselves standing in front of it for a souvenir ( I took maybe three for people who handed me their cameras). Stepping off the boardwalk I carefully balanced on a few large rocks to get this shot setting my tripod up in the water. Of the hundreds, or even thousands of images made that day of this scene, I would venture to guess that I made the only one with this kind of camera!

[Zero Image 6x9, Fujicolor 100]

I ended up southeast of town by maybe 20km or so next to a large slough and noticed that the car’s thermometer was registering -4C and so started to watch for frost laden grass and fog rising over the slough. I spent some time in the dark just listening to the birds at the slough, as I had maybe 40 minutes or so before the sun was up. I had seen a bit of grass in the ditch covered in frost only a few hundred meters before the slough, but decided to continue on with an idea of returning to the spot in a bit once it became lighter out. I am one of those people who really wants to see what is around the next bend in the road or over that small hill just ahead, and so that is exactly what I did. There were a few things to see and photograph as the sun peeked over the horizon, including this first image of grass rimmed in one of the first frosts of the season.

I decided then to head back to where I had first seen some other grasses in the ditch on the other side of the slough and up the road a ways. By now the air had warmed up sufficiently to melt the frost leaving many tiny droplets of water clinging to the individual blades. I searched through the tangled mess of grasses to find just the right combination of angles, and colours to make an image that captured the beauty I was seeing. It took a few minutes and once I located the spot I wanted to photograph I had to be very careful lining up my tripod and camera so as not to bump the leaves and lose all the tiny drops clinging to the blades. I stopped the lens down for maximum depth of field and as I had not brought my remote control,very slowly squeezed the shutter release for the 1/10 second exposure so as not to move the camera during the exposure. A quick check of the image on the LCD panel confirmed that it was indeed sharp and I headed off looking for more photo possibilities.

The deep rich tones of the grass contrasting with the droplets of water are what make this image, but also the right balance of curved grass blades heading this way and that in an organized manner. After travelling the backroads a bit longer, the sun was coming up strong and the interesting photo ops for me were over for the day.

The next morning I invited my youngest son Alexander to come along. He agreed and jumped out of bed at the 5:30 wake up call, unlike every other day when getting up means going to school. We again packed up the car, went through the drive through at McDonalds for a breakfast sandwich, a juice, and a coffee for me. We headed to the same slough as I had visited the previous day and again listened to the Common Goldeneyes with the wind whistling through their wings, some Canada geese, a bunch of coots, and then some shotgun blasts from some hunters off in the distance. I made a few images of the fog and some of the birdlife before we moved on to what I hoped would be greener pastures.

We headed further south and discovered a great example of my favourite kind of road – one which is very rough, has virtually no gravel and has lots of twists and turns. Following it along for a couple of kilometres it ended at a gas valve, so I parked the car and we headed off through the frost covered grasses. Me wearing jeans and boots, Alexander holding on to summer in shorts and running shoes remember it’s -4C. To say the least he was a bit uncomfortable. I guess that’s how we learn right? We ended up trekking over a small hill to find one of the nicest spots I’ve seen in this area. I truly would love love to own the property and build a weekend cabin to head to every now and again to spend time reading and canoeing and exploring the countryside.

From the top of the small hill, the view was spectacular looking across the water with the fog lifting and ducks swimming about as the sun was rising. Directly behind us was a great group of trees that I spent a while looking for an image. I ended up looking back towards the water through the trees directly into the sun to make the next image.

We headed back to the car as Alexander claimed he couldn’t feel his toes any longer. I turned the heater on in the car and we backtracked down the road. Once again we headed south hoping to find another access point to the water. We did find one, but it was posted for No Entry and so moved on. A little further down the gravel road we found another body of water of about the same size as the last, but the access point did not provide a very nice view. I wondered through the ditches again looking for interesting compositions. The grasses here had a fairly heavy frost and after a few minutes of looking I found just the right combo of elements that made a pleasing image.

A little more roaming about and I found this one leaf lying amongst the grass. It is such an obvious use of the rule of thirds, but it was there for the taking! Both mornings I was using Sony’s A900 SLR with the Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. The camera was great to work with and easy to use, although I couldn’t figure out how to get it to bracket exposures and use the self timer. the lens is a solid feeling optic and quite hefty, so is the camera, but when on a tripod it helps to steady for the longer exposures I was dealing with. The camera provides great high resolution files when used at the lowest ISO settings, but once you venture up to 400ISO things start to fall apart. Landscapes at 100ISO is where you need to use this camera.

The lens has superb resolution in the centre of the image even wide open and stopped down this zone of sharpness expands out to near the edges, although I found the extreme corners to still suffer from blurriness even when stopped down. I would honestly prefer to have the same focal length lens, but with a maximum aperture of f/4, and optics which would exhibit outstanding performance right into the corners. I never really need f/2.8 in this kind of lens anyway and the smaller maximum aperture would reduce the weight and size of the lens into something I wouldn’t mind carrying around for a day. Not a combo I would purchase, but one that was fun to play with.

[Sony A900, Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8]

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

This image is a crop from a file made with the 40 megapixel Pentax 645D. I wanted to see how far I could push these files and enlarged this one up to 90″ across and it’s still really sharp – stunning to say the least!

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]