HOW TO Photograph the Northern Lights / Auroras 2020

photographing the Northern Lights is a dance between you your camera settings and the Aurora's getting optimal photographs of the Northern Lights who cry us both proper gear photographing skills and persistence I've been photographing the Northern Lights for years and in this video I'll share everything I know about predicting and photographing the Aurora's [Music] I think it's worth it incredible light [Music] literally on top of the world [Music] in this video presentation I will talk about the physics of the Aurora's and how to predict them fairly precisely I will talk about how to photograph the Aurora's and all the practicalities that comes with that I will talk a bit about the weather Aurora season light pollution ends or techniques to use and things you need to be aware of while photographing the Northern Lights also known as the aurora borealis and their equatorial opposites the Southern Lights also known as Aurora Australis are some of the most wondrous natural phenomena only in recent years has the technology advanced enough for capturing the full details of these gorgeous displays of heavenly lights on a photograph for great many years photographers had to accept analog film cameras with ISO values not reaching beyond ISO 400 forcing longer shutter speeds to capture the Aurora's and that's only the limitations of the camera equipment imagine not having neither car nor a weather or aurora forecast help out hunting the lights basically relying on pure luck modern-day cameras and technology has made photographing and filming the Aurora's a little bit less than impossible [Music] when the constant stream of electrically charged particles from the Sun hit the Earth's magnetic field some of them get trapped the trapped particles then traveled towards the Earth's magnetic poles via the magnetic field lines leading them down into Earth's atmosphere where they strike atoms and molecules in a height of about 80 kilometers or above this interaction releases energy some of this energy is seen as the Aurora's this constant stream means there's always some interaction going on which means there's always Northern Lights the question is though how big and strong the stream of these particles is a stronger it is the bigger the chance of seeing the Northern Lights even on nights without visible Northern Lights your camera might be able to pick up a faint green glow the fluctuations or basically this strength in the stream of the particles is measured by the KP index the number given is the average global KP value from the past three hour period and thus not a forecast a three hour period start at midnight at universal coordinated time formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time which means the first period is from midnight to 3:00 a.m. the second from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. and so forth using the KP value as a way of predicting the Aurora's assumes the activity stays the same which isn't the best way of predicting anything let's imagine you are out at 2:30 a.m. and you're checking the KP value the value you have available is the global average from 9:00 p.m. to midnight which doesn't really help you much at 2:30 a.m. that's why you can have all the sources giving you a KP 6 yet there's no Aurora's in the sky because the activity has decreased in the mean time and visa-versa there's some physics and math behind calculating the KP value which is of little interest for this video but the index is scaled from 1 to 9 where one is weak and 9 is very strong normally the KP number swings between below 1 and 2 and during periods with higher than normal solar activity the number increases higher solar activity is due to huge explosions on the sun's surface spewing out matter into cosmos like the earth the Sun rotates around itself one Sunday equals to approximately 25 Earth days making the stream of particles leave the surface of the Sun as water leaves a rotating water sprinkler when one of these explosions or the remains of one of these explosions lines up with the earth the matter from the Sun hits the Earth's magnetic field increasing the activity in the Earth's atmosphere during a period with strong geomagnetic activity as it's rightly cold geomagnetic storms can occur geomagnetic storms are measured on the G scale from one to five which basically translates linearly to the KP scale T 1 equals to KP 5 T 2 to KP 6 and so forth 85 storm only happens during extreme events and it translates into a KP value of 9 during geomagnetic storms the charged particles are building up in Earth's magnetic field pushing it further into space stretching out the magneto tail like a rubber band when the magnetic field lines reconnects the energy is released making a snapback like when you release a rubber band accelerating the particles back towards Earth with increased velocity and strength making even stronger Aurora displays this means having a strong enough amount of electrically charged particles hit earth some of these particles will create the snapback effect giving a delayed aurora effect at weak to moderate activity the bane of Aurora's around the Earth hovers above Iceland northern Canada Alaska Siberia and northern Norway most Aurora's occur in a pain known as the Aurora zone or auroral oval which is typically 3 to 6 degrees wide in latitude and between 10 to 20 degrees from the geomagnetic poles at all longitudes the stronger the activity the further towards South dispense pushed during the extreme conditions of a kp9 Northern Lights can be observed as far south as Spain or Florida the amount of activity on the Sun decreases and increases in what's called solar cycles these cycles last approximately 11 years as of 2018 we are on our way towards minimum activity which should last until 2020 where the activity should increase again low activity basically means there's on average further between geomagnetic storms and their weaker compared to appear of higher activity that doesn't mean you can't have high Aurora activity whenever it comes to these measurements and predictions it's a question about probability nothing is set in stone with the Aurora's after all we get most of the data from only one satellite with another as backup these satellites are stationed in an orbit called the Sun Earth Lagrange point one this is a poignant space which is always located between the Sun and Earth where the gravity of the Sun and earth have an equal pool on satellites meaning they can remain in a stable orbit around this point depending on the speed of the solar wind these satellites can only give us 15 to 16 minutes of warning time before we know what solar wind structures will hit us so with all the technical stuff out of the way how do you actually predict when to go and photograph the aurorus I use a few different options both space will the live.com and the apps my Aurora forecast Pro by Jake Rustin and northern I or or or forecasts space weather live.com is in my opinion the best resource for predicting what I've come across that is if you understand all the graphs and data besides having the most recent KP value the graph shows the solar wind solar intensity and the BT NBC values of the interplanetary magnetic field also known as the Heliospheric magnetic field which is a component of the sun's magnetic fields the first two graphs on the Left describes the solar wind one is for the solar wind speed and one is for the solar intensity the faster the wind the heart of the charged particles hit the molecules in the atmosphere resulting in stronger roars and the tense of the winters the more particles hits more molecules resulting in bigger into action resulting in more and stronger Aurora's as already stated dependent on the speed of the solar wind we have more or less time to prepare for the Aurora's the turkish path tells us that time information comes from the right of the graphs and the black vertical line on top of the gravis represents earth now there are two more factors playing in which you can see on the two graphs on the right interplanetary magnetic fields BT and BC values the BT value is the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field the stronger the field the more magnetism the more Aurora's the average value of the interplanetary magnetic field is six nano Tesla's but four geomagnetic storms to occur you'd like values of at least 10 nano Tesla's the PC value is basically the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field since space is three-dimensional there's also a px and py value but these two doesn't influence are all activity when the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field turned southward the BC value turns negative this is good as Earth's magnetic field lines are turned north as you know from magnetism North and South Poles attract each other in north north or south and south detract each other when the southbound interplanetary magnetic field meets the north bound magnetosphere of the earth they merge resulting in the transfer of energy mass and momentum from the solar wind flow to the magnetosphere transferring all those delicious electrically charged particles towards the poles of the earth and into our atmosphere with the north bound interplanetary magnetic fields or positive BC value Aurora's are still possible you just need the other factors solar wind speeds intensity and the BT value to be much higher during the higher activity periods of the solar cycles these three values are on average larger if you're still in doubt just aim for the colors no activity represented by the green color moderate by the yellow and high activity by red and if you want even more information be sure to hover over the small blue information icon so these are the factors you need to be aware of in predicting the Aurora's it's still impossible to say anything about the behavior of the actual roars when exactly they'll appear and precisely where on the night sky you will see them but I hope you understood the graphs and how to interpret them giving you a better chance of predicting when and have the statistically best chance of observing the lights there's also long term forecasts which goes beyond an hour but they are a lot more insecure and subject to change although they are good enough for scheduling your calendar some days in advance so that's everything I had to say about the space of weather but what about the Earth's weather since the Aurora's happen in an altitude of 80 kilometer or more and clouds form from sea level to a maximum of 18 kilometers the clouds will be between you and the Aurora's if you have a full cloud cover you might as well give up this video being a part of my Ison series I normally use the Icelandic and Norwegian weather services to predict the weather Vader is being the Icelandic and yr dot and O being the Norwegian the weather predictions from these two services are rarely alike in my experience the Norwegian comes out on top being the best at predicting the weather 60 percent of the time although it has been way off before in general protecting the weather in Iceland is very hard even a day in advance not to mention a week local clouds forming on top of mountains are sometimes not taken into consideration by the weather services but they'll hugely influential photo my best advice is to make a general assessment from the weather services and then combine these with your own knowledge and experience to make conclusions the Atlantic Weather Service have an Aurora forecast map where the Greens represent clouds and whites clear sky but this is in my experience sadly not as accurate as out wish in my opinion a few clouds can be very beneficial to your Aurora photos adding mood and giving a good sense of scale and depth to the scene the face of the moon also has a huge impact on the visibility of the Northern Lights if the moon is visible in the sky the reflected light from the Sun is scattered in the atmosphere snuffing out the lights from the Aurora's you'll need stronger roars to compensate for the extra ambient lights having the moon in the sky helps a great deal on brightening up your foreground the moon will be more and more present in the first part of the night while waxing after full moon it'll rise later and later after sunset and about a week after full moon it won't rise until 2 a.m. when new moon comes it all repeats I'd say as a rule of thumb you would not want to have more than half the moon illuminated to strike a proper balance preferably something like 30 to 40 percent illuminated but that all depends on the strength of the roars you've seen and in what direction you're photographing or filming light pollution is also a thing although you definitely can photograph the roars above a town or city the Aurora's will have to be fairly strong to do so you'll benefit hugely moving away from any source of light pollution the bigger the source the further away just like in regular astrophotography [Music] what's defined as the aurora season is usually between late September and late March you basically just want as much night as possible having a wider window and bigger chance of seeing the Aurora's the further north or south you get on the earth the bigger Verity on the length of the day you get dependent on the season at higher latitudes the Sun won't set at all during summer making it impossible to watch the faint glow of the Aurora's aurora season is not necessary during winter autumn and spring equinoxes work perfectly fine too if you don't want frostbite in your fingers when the Sun is 18 degrees beneath the horizon is defined as night so aim for that in regard to seeing the colors of the Aurora's with your own eyes it's possible but they will never be as saturated as your photos from your camera's this is because our eyes have cones and rocks the cone cells work in bright light such as daylight while Rod cells detect the much fainter light during night but these only see in black or white and shades of gray the Aurora's are more than often simply too faint to be detected by our color detecting cone cells you will need a high activity Aurora storm to detect the colors camera sensors doesn't have this limitation the Aurora's also change in colors which is due to what molecules and particles the electrically charged particles interact with in the atmosphere and at what height so finally we've come to how to photograph the Aurora so first and foremost you want to bring warm clothes more than you think you need way more no matter the season staying out during night standing still coldness fast creeps in on you depending on your shooting location bring waterproof boots of course you need your camera and a tripod bring extra and charge batteries depending on your shooting style maybe a shutter release cable or remote a headlamp or flashlight and a smartphone as to help you predict the Aurora's during cold weather batteries last shorter keep them in your inner pockets close to your skin as to keep them warm also cool down your gear before wintering out into a frosty night to avoid condensation if that's not an option strap some heat patches on your camera the same goes when you bring your camera gear back in keep it in your camera bag for a couple of hours or more to avoid condensation [Music] when it comes to the settings you have to shoot a manual mode as to be able to control your exposure factors shutter speed aperture ISO and white balance but first and foremost you will need to focus manual focus is a must for most digital cameras turn on live view and focus manually on a bright star or object in the distance remember to sub in during live view to see if the star or light is in focus most cameras can zoom in to at least times 10 use your buttons to move around your photo until you found the light if you can't see anything decrease your shutter speed open your aperture or increase your ISO if no lights are present whatsoever it's cloudy and foggy and you can't photograph the Northern Lights anyway there's always some distant light available if you still can't see any lights after zooming in although you can see stars remove your lens cap I've successfully photographed eros with a Canon 5d Mark to 5d mark 3 50 years and sony a7r 3 and I've been using my sony a6000 for time lapses when it comes to what camera to use I suggest using one with acceptable noise levels and a minimum of ISO 3200 so we are out here to photograph the Aurora's and it looks absolutely promising we have like quarter of a moon to line up the foreground we have a kp5 prediction which is actually right now a bit too strong but we will see how we will go throughout the night we might need to change the composition a little bit because right now I figured during the day that I would photograph towards the mountains here but the Aurora's are actually in that direction they are so strong so the thing is when you want to shoot the Aurora's there's a few things you need to factor in first and foremost as with all other photography you want a proper composition like just going out into the middle of nowhere and start photographing there roars it can be ok if you want to like just stock up on our Aurora's cleaner roars but else really think about having some kind of interesting foregrounds it's with all other kinds of landscape photography super-important to have some depth in your photo so you have like foreground middle-ground and background not the depth in itself is super important it's just that it invites the viewer into the frame so when it comes to gear first and foremost you would want to have a camera which is good at handling high ISO which is something like 1600 and Beyond usually that's full frame cameras then you would want to have a fast lens which means a lens which can go down to an aperture of 2.8 or even lower for the most part you would also want to have a white angle and ultra wide-angle lens like let's say just down to 40 milimeter 16 millimeters often okay right now I'm shooting on a 20 millimeter and more than often I think it's a bit too narrow but I do have an aperture of 1/4 to play around with which is super super nice because the next thing you need to be aware of is that you also want a low shutter speed so you want a low ISO a low aperture simply just to collect as much light as possible but of course with the aperture you also want actually to have it as high as possible whether I like 5.6 to get the sharpest photo as possible and you would want to have as low a shutter speed as possible because the Aurora's move through the night and if you do a long exposure the Aurora's can often become one big green mass of Blair and the white balance you can always change that in post-processing if you are photographing in raw formats which you obviously shoot because it's night photography and a lot of things can go wrong so usually I prefer the colors of the aurorus and a color temperature of around 3800 Justin like in that area so now it's about being tagged enough and we will go scout the area luckily we are at a stir horn right now and this is just like a playground for landscape photographers there are so many possibilities for strong foregrounds and you have the mountains as the background or the sky as the background and you have the middle ground with the water or some cliffs or whatever you can find like there's so many possibilities here so right now you can see just here above me we are in for a treat tonight this is just absolutely incredible so right now I'm shooting with ISO 32000 and an aperture of 1/4 and a shutter speed of 125th of a second and you can actually see the Aurora's and you can see the lighthouse here in the background it is just incredible this night is going to just blow out of proportions so yeah I can't wait to get started just look at this I'm too excited for this when you've attached your camera to your tripod turn off steady shot vibration compensation image stabilization or whatever your camera manufacturer calls it as this will actually shake your photo blurring a picture also turn off long exposure noise decreasing or compensation as this function basically takes another photo putting in on top of your original photo averaging out the noise problem being the Aurora's will move resulting in blurred Aurora's and I'd also suggest having a proper and sturdy tripod which doesn't shake during windy conditions in regard to the settings I suggest starting out with the following try start out with an ISO of 1600 aperture of f28 or lower and a 10-second shutter speed the strength of the Aurora can vary a lot also within a very short time span where you have to change your settings fast as to not over all under exposure photo and this is the hardest part of photograph in yours nailing the exposure use your histogram preferably RGB histogram as to keep an eye on the green channel as this has a tendency to easily over expose don't ever rely on your display you simply can't trust it there really aren't any standard settings for photographing yours there are simply too many varying factors involved as I started out by saying photographing the Aurora's is a tense between you your camera and the Aurora's the best you can do is to know your camera know where the bottoms are located as to be able to change settings fast in the dark and how much you can push the eye so as to not get too much grain you also have to take the depth of field into consideration if you as I photograph at f-14 at 20 millimeter the first 10 meter in front of the camera will be out of focus if I focus on infinity this highly influenced my conversation and the techniques I used to make my photos having a foreground closer to the camera then 10 meter I have to either stop down on the aperture or focus tagged the photo other techniques to consider beside focus tagging our image blending where you make one exposure for the sky and the aurorus and one exposure for the foreground and then blend them in the post-processing you can also blend in the sky with a daytime photo or even as I've done in the past make composites of nighttime photos daytime photos or blue our photos in regard to composition you can use the same tools as I've already made several videos about focal point leading lines balance etc be sure to check out my videos on composition as stated the night we were at a straw horn I scouted out the composition in daylight it comes highly recommended to find your composition before it gets too dark since determining what kind of composition that works in the dark can be next to nearly impossible I started out photographing the path leading up to the lighthouse but my goal was to photograph the roars behind the mountains of a straw horn I found the composition with the waves in front leading up to the mountains to be the most desirable that night and with the moon being about 40 percent illuminated it lit up the foreground perfectly [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] when I got the photos I wandered from the position I left the position and went for a walk up the beach to get a more optimal angle lining the mountains up with the aurorus with this moderate to high active display of Aurora's the most active part of the sky was often straight above our heads when that's the case you will see the Aurora stretching from east to west and not towards north as you'll see in the lower latitudes like Scotland and Denmark the direction of the arrows obviously highly influenced your composition and you will have to take this into consideration when preparing during the night the Aurora's exploded again and again making it the most active night I had in Iceland this winter sadly I didn't get anything as strong as I got in Lofoten back in November but from what I've learned that's also a rare event I managed to catch a few more photos before the roars died down a natural I decided to call it a night but as it goes with the Aurora's most often the second you decide to pack up they reignite almost negative we got another fantastic display [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I can heavily announce I'll release my first Bible post-processing tutorial here I show how and make my Aurora composites I talk composition and techniques on how to seamlessly blend the different photos and edit them the Aurora's are an absolutely spectacular phenomena nothing really compares to seeing these magnificent lights wave over the night sky so many people it's a hugely existential and addictive experience researching this video has taught me a great deal on Aurora's I hope you enjoyed the video and learned something so thank you very much for watching and if you're interested in my post processing techniques be sure to check out the link in the description below you

Channel: Mads Peter Iversen

Views: 89,769

Rating: 4.9606986 out of 5

Keywords: aurora photography, aurora borealis, northern lights, northern lights photography, photographing the northern lights, how to photograph, ultimate, guide, landscape photography, photography, iceland, landscape photography iceland, eystrahorn, guide to iceland, photoshop tutorial, northern lights settings, northern lights iceland, the ultimate guide, mads peter iversen, northern lights tips, tips and tricks, how to photograph the northern lights, aurora prediction, prediction, complete

Id: G3iUPg3gJgY

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Tue May 15 2018