Aurora Photography - lessons and learnings

[yorick]

Thanks for the lessons. I'm planning a trip this winter (in Norwey) so this is very useful to know. From the "Image settings" paragraph, I suppose that you are shooting in Manual mode.

I already own a 16-35 f/2.8L and a 5DIII but I've been considering buying or renting a 24 f/1.4L. I would have a better image quality with the 24 (but possibly not a lot better). Is it worth gaining 1 or 2 stops and the a-bit-better-image-quality by getting the 24 f/1.4L (this lens would anyway be reused after the aurora trip) ?

[Jonathan Huyer]

Thanks for the lessons. I'm planning a trip this winter (in Norwey) so this is very useful to know. From the "Image settings" paragraph, I suppose that you are shooting in Manual mode.

I already own a 16-35 f/2.8L and a 5DIII but I've been considering buying or renting a 24 f/1.4L. I would have a better image quality with the 24 (but possibly not a lot better). Is it worth gaining 1 or 2 stops and the a-bit-better-image-quality by getting the 24 f/1.4L (this lens would anyway be reused after the aurora trip) ?

Yes that's right, I shoot in manual mode as I'm pretty sure the light meter would be inaccurate with aurora. The 24 f/1.4 is a superb lens but it also costs a lot and might be pretty hard to justify if you already have the 16-35 f/2.8 LII. If you have the version I of that lens (like I do) then you might not be as happy with it at night. Definitely having a fast shutter speed helps a lot with aurora, if you happen to get lucky and have an evening where the lights take off. When they start to move, they go very quickly and display gorgeous filaments. At slow shutter speeds (greater than 4 sec) these details end up as blobs of green and red... still very pretty but not a good capture of what you see in real life. Of course the 5D3 can also be cranked up to high ISO, which is definitely worth doing to improve the speed. But try it at a variety of settings and decide for yourself how high you want to go.

Hope that helps!