Photographing an unusual aurora in southeastern Michigan
Last weekend, a strong geomagnetic storm resulted in an aurora being somewhat visible where I live in southeastern Michigan. This is unusual! I didn’t have that much time to prepare for it, but I wanted to share my photos (the Flickr album is embedded above) and note what worked (in terms of photography) and what I would change.
I found this article to be a good guide, and I’m not going to repeat it here. My additional notes are:
- Having a good tripod and cable release is a good idea. For Friday night I had my tripod ready but didn’t get my cable release out in time, and I wish I had. These are long exposures — from 4 or 5 up to 20+ seconds — and a lot of my photos were sadly not sharp due to vibrations. If you don’t have a cable release, set your camera’s self-timer to a short setting (e.g. 2 seconds); this will allow vibrations from your hand to dissipate before the shutter opens. You can also configure the self-timer to take multiple photos in a row, which will increase your chances of getting a good shot.
- On cameras that have this feature, enable electronic front-curtain shutter to reduce vibration.
- Set your camera LCD to the dimmest brightness setting and rely on the histogram to evaluate exposure.
- You’ll want to bring spare camera batteries and a red headlamp or flashlight.
- Turn off VR/IS or your lens’s equivalent when shooting long exposures on a tripod.
- Disable auto ISO, auto exposure, and AF; you’ll get the best results by controlling everything manually.
- If possible, use lenses with hard infinity stops/marks, like the Irix 11mm and 15mm lenses.
- I wish I’d also thought to try my fisheye lens to capture even more expansive views of the sky. Hindsight is 20/20.
- Keep in mind that everything is a tradeoff: shooting a fast lens wide open won’t give you optimal sharpness; shooting at very high ISO will result in some noise (though modern noise reduction software like DxO’s offering is very good), and an exposure time longer than about 10 seconds (depending on your lens’s field of view) will show visible star movement.
Finally, on Sunday I used an ND100000 filter to get a shot of the sun that highlights the large area of sunspot activity that caused this geomagnetic storm. I’m unhappy with this photo’s sharpness, but it was cloudy all day and I had a very limited time window to get something:
