Aurora at last…

[Nigel_O]

Like many thousands/ millions of people, I finally got to see and photograph the aurora last night. One of my bucket-list shots.

Bit of a steep learning curve with camera settings and also a long way to go to find somewhere really dark (I’m in Staffordshire and drove out to North Wales - turns out I needn’t have bothered, as the aurora was visible almost anywhere with no cloud).

Bit annoyed that my camera just wouldn’t work with my Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens, so I fell back on a trusty 16-35 f4 and set the exposure to 20 seconds. Also tried a 50mm f1.4, but the shots just weren’t wide enough.

Anyway - one of my shots

DSC_5634 by Nigel Ogram, on Flickr

Did anyone else get anything?

Edited by Nigel_O on Saturday 11th May 20:54

[Nemophilist]

I’m just outside the m25 with terrible light pollution. It was impressive. This is just with an iPhone 12

[thegreenhell]

It was barely visible to the naked eye here in the South of England with terrible light pollution, so I was surprised at the amount of colour in a 3s exposure, handheld, leaning against a wall.

Nikon D610
Tokina 16-28 f2.8
3s @ f4.5, iso 1600

Edited by thegreenhell on Saturday 11th May 21:57

[the-norseman]

So this is what my naked eye saw last night


This is what my Google Pixel 6 with night mode saw


according to Google Photos -
ƒ/1.85
1/3
6.81 mm
ISO8734

[GravelBen]

Probably the strongest aurora in decades... and it was bloody well cloudy/raining everywhere within about 2 hours of me, only got occasional glimpses through breaks in the cloud.

Edited by GravelBen on Sunday 12th May 01:36

[velocemitch]

Dead chuffed with mine, taken on Redmire Moor and also on the Catterick Ranges.

Aurora-Redmire Moor-10-5-24 by Ian Mitchell, on Flickr

Aurora-Catterick Ranges-11-5-24-3 by Ian Mitchell, on Flickr

Aurora-Catterick Ranges-11-5-24-2 by Ian Mitchell, on Flickr

Aurora-Catterick Ranges-11-5-24 by Ian Mitchell, on Flickr

[rallye101]

Cool pics, think you missed the previous post from Saturday.....we saw sod all in Surrey last night

[GravelBen]

One of the glimmers through the cloud, what could have been...

Sadly clouded aurora by Ben, on Flickr

[leggly]

Looking straight up into the corona.

[leggly]

Nigel_O said:

Like many thousands/ millions of people, I finally got to see and photograph the aurora last night. One of my bucket-list shots.

Bit of a steep learning curve with camera settings and also a long way to go to find somewhere really dark (I’m in Staffordshire and drove out to North Wales - turns out I needn’t have bothered, as the aurora was visible almost anywhere with no cloud).

Bit annoyed that my camera just wouldn’t work with my Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens, so I fell back on a trusty 16-35 f4 and set the exposure to 20 seconds. Also tried a 50mm f1.4, but the shots just weren’t wide enough.

Anyway - one of my shots

DSC_5634 by Nigel Ogram, on Flickr

Did anyone else get anything?

Edited by Nigel_O on Saturday 11th May 20:54

Camera settings for Aurora… try starting at iso 3200 and moving higher if need be. I was shooting one second exposures during the storm on Friday night, Saturday morning. ISO 6400, 16mm at f/2.8 was where I ended up. I was going for quantity that night and ended up with over 2000 images to play with for a Timelapse.

[velocemitch]

leggly said:

Nigel_O said:

Like many thousands/ millions of people, I finally got to see and photograph the aurora last night. One of my bucket-list shots.

Bit of a steep learning curve with camera settings and also a long way to go to find somewhere really dark (I’m in Staffordshire and drove out to North Wales - turns out I needn’t have bothered, as the aurora was visible almost anywhere with no cloud).

Bit annoyed that my camera just wouldn’t work with my Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens, so I fell back on a trusty 16-35 f4 and set the exposure to 20 seconds. Also tried a 50mm f1.4, but the shots just weren’t wide enough.

Anyway - one of my shots

DSC_5634 by Nigel Ogram, on Flickr

Did anyone else get anything?

Edited by Nigel_O on Saturday 11th May 20:54

Camera settings for Aurora… try starting at iso 3200 and moving higher if need be. I was shooting one second exposures during the storm on Friday night, Saturday morning. ISO 6400, 16mm at f/2.8 was where I ended up. I was going for quantity that night and ended up with over 2000 images to play with for a Timelapse.

Nigel, why didn’t the Samyang work? Just wondering if it’s a focusing issue? I quite often find I can’t get the camera to focus on this sort of shot, I switch to manual and close the aperture down to get a better depth of field. The shots posted earlier were done like that. I doubt the lens affected it, except with my11-16 Tokina, I would get better depth of field than the sigma super zoom I usual have fitted. ( less risk of infinity being out of focus)
I hoped switching bodies, from a 550D, to a 7D iI might help, but it hasn’t.

[pastrana72]

10/5/24 at about 11pm on a Devon back road near Exeter.
Nikon D850 with 14 - 24mm F 2.8 30 sec exposure ISO 64.

I got a fair few on Flickr, luckily I popped out at 10pm to see if I could see anything, first shot I took was a very faint green colour in the sky, then it all went pretty mad, blessed really to catch it.

[Nigel_O]

velocemitch said:

Nigel, why didn’t the Samyang work? Just wondering if it’s a focusing issue?

I suspect operator error...

When I mounted the lens, I couldn't set the aperture at anything below 5. It just showed an error code and refused to take the shot. Annoyingly, the next day, I tried again and it worked fine....

Focusing on the Samyang is always a faff when pointing at a night sky. I have to use live view and then zoom right in, but the live view is always blurry until I put my glasses on I normally don't use glasses for photography, as my diopter can cope