Camera Settings For Aurora Photography
Here are some good settings to start your night of photographing Northern Lights
Set your camera and lens to manual focus.
Set the camera on full manual mode so you have to manually select aperture, ƒ-stop, and ISO
Lens focus set to infinity – How do we do that?
1 – Some lenses have a true infinity. Set the lens to the infinity line and you are good to go.
2 – You may have to pre-focus to infinity during the day. Focus on a faraway tree line, or mountain. That will be infinity. Then tape your lens barrel down.
3 – If you can use your LCD screen you can zoom in to a star or the moon and manually set focus. That will be infinity and will keep your stars sharp.
Evaluative or matrix metering mode – you want to meter the entire scene. If you set it to spot meter the camera will take the exposure of the point of focus.
Aperture at ƒ/2.8 or ƒ/4? – The lowest number as your lens can go is the correct answer. I generally set my aperture at ƒ/2.8 after I have my focus set to infinity.
Exposure at 15 seconds for slower auroras and 3-5 seconds for faster ones. I will set my shutter speed to 10 seconds to start. If the aurora is slow I will go to 20 seconds. If it is curling fast I will set as fast as 3-5 seconds to make the aurora sharp
Set ISO at 1,600 to start with and experiment. From here you can adjust based on the aurora show you are witnessing. If the aurora goes bring, adjust your ISO down. If the aurora is dim, bump up the ISO.
Set your temperature between 3500-4000 Kelvin. Sure, you can do this in post-processing. But try to set it in your camera and see what effect it can have on your aurora.
These settings can all be adjusted to achieve different results. Changing any one of the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO will have an effect on your images. If you understand the exposure triangle, you will quickly get the hang of taking aurora images. At the end of this series of posts, I will share images. settings and commentary.