The Wild Photographer

How to Photograph the Northern Lights, from Beginner to Advanced with Court Whelan

• Court Whelan

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On this episode of The Wild Photographer Court Whelan takes you on an exciting journey into the art of Northern Lights photography. From the gear you need to choosing the best locations, Court shares his expertise and years of experience in capturing this natural wonder. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned photographer, this episode offers valuable insights to elevate your Aurora photography skills.

Court discusses essential techniques, including camera settings, composition tips, and even how to use your phone for breathtaking shots. He also explores the science behind the Aurora Borealis and how to pick the perfect time and location for your next photography adventure. Packed with practical advice, this episode is your ultimate guide to capturing nature's most dazzling light show.

Expect to Learn:

  • The challenges and joys of photographing the Northern Lights
  • How to select and use the right gear for Aurora photography
  • Tips for composing stunning shots with dynamic foregrounds
  • The science behind the Aurora Borealis and choosing optimal locations
  • Using camera settings and time-lapse techniques to capture the Aurora
  • How to shoot great Northern Lights photos with your smartphone

Episode Breakdown with Timestamps:
[00:00:47] – Introduction: Court introduces the episode and the magic of Northern Lights photography.
[00:07:05] – Choosing the Right Gear: Insights into cameras, lenses, and tripods for the best results.
[00:15:11] – Timing Matters: Understanding the 11-year Aurora cycle and best months for viewing.
[00:24:00] – Composing Your Shots: Importance of foreground elements and techniques for framing.
[00:29:48] – Mastering Focus: Tips for achieving sharp focus in challenging conditions.
[00:39:17] – Phone Photography: Capturing the Aurora using smartphones.
[00:41:05] – Court’s Gear Picks: Recommendations for cameras, lenses, and accessories.
[00:45:45] – Closing Thoughts: Court wraps up with tips and listener Q&A about multi-purpose lenses.

This episode is kindly sponsored by:

LensRentals.com.  Use WildPhotographer15 promo code for 15% discount.  

My Full Camera Kit:

  • Canon R5 Body
  • Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8
  • Canon RF 24-105mm f/4
  • Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1
  • Canon RF 70-200 f/2.8
  • Canon EF Macro 100mm f/2.8
  • Canon RF 50mm f/1.8
  • Peak Design Carbon Fiber Tripod

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Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Wild Photographer. Today we are talking about a deep dive into Northern Lights photography. Aurora Borealis, dawn of the North, northern Lights call it what you want, I call it one of, if not the most fun and exciting things to photograph on planet Earth. It's not even on planet Earth, you're photographing the cosmos. You're photographing really the most amazing thing you're going to see in your life. It's Mother Nature's firework show. It is just this other worldly thing that is hard to really describe the beauty of. But I think we do a pretty darn good job with photography. So this is a deep dive into Northern Lights photography from beginner to advanced. That means that if you are a beginner, I'm going to get you to advanced by the end of this episode. It also means that if you are advanced in photography already, I'm going to give you every tool and trick in my arsenal to get you out taking extraordinary Northern Lights shots on your very first go. I'm also going to tell you about where to go to take Northern Lights photos the best in the world because that's a big, big part of the equation too. So we'll get into the episode in a second, but quick couple housekeeping things. As always. I want to invite you to submit a listener question. Today's question we'll get to at the end of this episode and it's about multi-purpose lenses, their efficacy, their pros and their cons. So I'm looking forward to answering that question on air. But also I invite you to submit your own. You can ask anything in the world of nature photography, be it wildlife, landscape, travel, cultural you name it. I would love to hear from you and you can do so by either writing fan mail in a podcast realm that's a sort of new thing in the podcast world or you can go to my YouTube channel. That's just at Court Whalen. So go on to YouTube, search Court Whalen and you're going to find my channel and you can leave a comment under any of my podcast episodes. Doesn't matter which one, just any comment. I'll see it and I'll respond to it there and respond to it on air. Or you can email me at wildphotographerpodcast at gmailcom. That's wildphotographerpodcast at gmailcom. I'd also like to thank the sponsor of this episode, lensrentalscom. If you use the promo code wild photographer 15, you can get 15 off renting any sort of gear. This is a really, really good episode to talk about that, because gear is quite important for northern lights photography and there is one specific category of lens that I'm going to talk about in this episode. That is pretty high end, but it's going to get you the most high end, the best results. So we'll talk about that. And again, renting that for your northern lights adventure is going to be a really best results. So we'll talk about that. And again, renting that for your Northern Lights adventure is going to be a really, really pro tip. So we'll get into that more. But again, big thanks to Lens Rentals making amazing lenses available to all of us and making this podcast possible through their sponsorship. So thank you so much there. All right, folks, without further ado, let's get into it A deep dive into Northern Lights photography from beginner to advanced.

Speaker 1:

Ado, let's get into it A deep dive into Northern Lights photography from beginner to advanced. So let's talk about the challenges first. You are often in very cold places, in very remote places. It's usually at night. It better be at night, or else you're not going to see them. And it's going to be new. It's going to be something you probably haven't done a lot of before, even if you've done a lot of night photography. This puts you in a different element. So between the cold, between the gear slugging around a tripod between not really knowing what you're looking for, and then the frenzy and the extraordinary views you have, that kind of puts you out of your own element. You get kind of in a tizzy. So there's lots stacked up against you for Northern Lights photography. But on the flip side, it's one of the easiest ways to photograph something truly extraordinary, because you're not waiting for a split second action, like salmon leaping into a bear's mouth, warming huts and putting your tripod and your camera outside and looking for foreground elements, and then going inside and having some hot cocoa, some teas, some Baileys, whatever's on deck, and then waiting for that Aurora show. So you have the time, you now have the knowledge, or you soon will, from this podcast, but the settings are kind of complicated and, in addition, the settings are actually pretty easy and straightforward, like we'll get to in a second.

Speaker 1:

The challenge is putting that all together with that frenzy, with the cold, with the night, with, you know, the fervor that is chasing the aurora. So, again, the idea of this episode is to overcome all those challenges and you're going to find, through the various things I talk about today, that it's actually pretty straightforward you just have to juggle a few things all at once. It's actually pretty straightforward you just have to juggle a few things all at once. So the cool thing as well is I'm going to tell you in this episode how to get great Aurora photos on your phone. Yes, if you have a phone that's within the last three years, you're going to get some great Aurora shots. I've seen it time and time again. It's actually one of the most inspiring things to see someone just use their phone, point it to the sky for about a second and then come away with something that's very social media share worthy, very textable to friends and really, really quite fun.

Speaker 1:

But that all being said, your best bet, your best quality photos, of course, is going to come from some fancier DSLR or mirrorless camera. So let's get into the gear itself. So the first thing you're going to need is a tripod. Okay, so tripod holding your camera still is absolutely critical. You're going to be taking exposures anywhere from five to 25 seconds and doing that handheld, unless you're on a smartphone we're going to get to that later but doing with a camera, you know, proper DSLR, a proper mirrorless.

Speaker 1:

You simply have to have a tripod, and a good sturdy tripod as well. I really don't like these light, small travel tripods that are kind of flimsy. If you think of some of these places that we're going in the dead of winter in the northern areas it can be windy, there can be snow on the ground, so having something kind of big and beefy and sturdy really is to your benefit. Fortunately, we're not having to slug this tripod around on a lot of trails to get deeper and deeper into the woods or deeper into the wild, so you don't have to have something that's ultra packable. So I do recommend a good sturdy tripod. I love my Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod, but I also love my Peak Design carbon fiber tripod. The Peak Design is a little bit lighter but because it is such a high-end tripod it's really quite stable.

Speaker 1:

But getting some sort of good sturdy tripod honestly, when we think about the singular goal of photographing Northern Lights, the heavier the better. I realize that that is not the goal for travel. Necessarily, small and light is good for travel, but think about that when balancing what gear you do bring. If you have choices in your tripod, say, you have a couple of them at home, don't worry about taking the light one. Get the heavy one.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so probably the biggest thing, other than the camera itself as far as gear that can vary, that you have some choices on, but is ultra important, is your ultra wide angle lens. Now notice, I'm saying ultra. Your ultra wide angle is going to be something that is almost on the fis eye in the spectrum. It's not your kit lens, it's not the thing that comes with your camera. It's not your 18 to 55, your 24 to 105, or even your 24 millimeter prime. We're talking about your really wide end. So for crop frame sensors, we're talking about like a 10 to 22. For full frame sensors, we're talking about something like a 15 to 35. So you really want to think about going ultra wide.

Speaker 1:

Now, what often confuses people is you have a choice of ultra wide or very fast when it comes to lenses. The speed of a lens is not how quickly it can take a photo, it's how much light it lets in. And oftentimes, if you are more on the advanced in the spectrum out there in the audience, you're probably thinking well, wouldn't I rather have a 24 millimeter F1.4? It's not ultra wide, but that F1.4 lets in a ton of light and I have to say when I was really into astrophotography. That's the lens I used as a 24 1.4. I took it to Northern Lights and it was not my ideal lens. I would rather have a much slower lens. I was using like a 17 to 40 f4 for many years and, as you know, f4 is like one quarter the amount of light that an f1.4 is. So, as a result, I'm really obsessed about taking the widest lens that I can and I'm not actually too worried about the aperture.

Speaker 1:

Now, that being said, my favorite lens for photographing the Northern Lights is the 15-35mm f2.8 class of lenses. Now, different camera manufacturers will have 14-24mm or it might be a 16-35mm, so don't get hung up in the exact number, but something in and around 15mm on the wide end, and if you can get that f2.8, that is going to be definitely your best bet. Now, I did just say don't't worry about speed, and I get it. I'm contradicting myself, but if you can get a slightly faster lens while maintaining ultra wide, that's great. You do want to let in more light. You'll just be surprised at how bright the Aurora really can be, especially when you have super long exposures like 10, 15, 20, 25 seconds.

Speaker 1:

My key point here is that when you have two sides of the balance. You have a sort of moderate lens like a 24 millimeter or 28 millimeter or a 35 millimeter. That's really really fast F1.4, f1.2, even F1.8. Put that aside and pick up the ultra wide angle. That's gonna be a lot slower. Like the 10 to 22, like the 15 to 35, those are gonna be your best bet because you want to see more sky. Simply put, I didn't get to that point. That's the whole point here. You want more sky. You also want more foreground. So ultra wide is the key. The speed, the light. We'll figure that out in the camera settings.

Speaker 1:

A piece of gear that I'm going to tell you you don't need is a shutter release. A lot of times people think oh, long exposure, big landscape opportunities. I need to bring some sort of shutter release cable with me or a remote. If you have one I'm not telling you to, you know, completely, leave it at home. I just don't personally use them. I prefer the two second timer delay instead.

Speaker 1:

This is a feature that every single camera, every single iPhone has. What it does is you can set your camera on a two second exposure delay. So when you hit that shutter button, it takes one Mississippi to Mississippi and then it shoots. The reason this is important is because, even if your camera's on a tripod, when you press that shutter, you don't want the movement of the camera, that slight, fractional movement, to appear in the photo. You want your camera to settle down, you want your hands to be away from the camera when that exposure, when that shutter actually snaps, and this is why a shutter release can be very good.

Speaker 1:

The reason I don't bring it is just one more piece of gear to have to fuddle with. It's one more thing. You have to sync up to your camera with Bluetooth or wireless. If you find a really, really great shutter release out there, please leave that in the comments. Let me know what it is. I just haven't found that yet, but maybe there is something out there that you know and you personally love. And, yeah, you can bring it, but I don't think it's necessary. It's definitely not a piece of gear that is really crucial for this trip.

Speaker 1:

Now the final thing. This is not a piece of gear, but this is absolutely a necessity. This is going to be location. You need a great location for great Aurora photography. So that leads me to my next section how to put yourself in front of the aurora.

Speaker 1:

Well, this is where I get a little bit nerdy and scientific, and your location is going to be very, very dependent on how close you are to what's called the aurora oval. It's a common misconception that you can just go further and further north towards the North Pole and have better and better chances of seeing the aurora. That's simply not true. There's actually a band of high magnetic activity around geomagnetic North Pole, and this is not the North Pole itself. It's slightly askew, but the point is it doesn't get better the closer to the pole you get. It's actually an oval, it's like a ring, it's a band. It's something that if you go too close to the pole, you might as well be too far south. I'll say that again If you go too far north of this ring or this oval, it's like being too far south. So being at the north pole, you might as well be in Nebraska, basically.

Speaker 1:

So the key is to be in a position right around that aurora oval, because this is where the magnetic field lines of the earth dip down. It's where the solar winds and solar particles, like these electrons and these protons, stream towards earth along this oval, along these bands. They're called Van Allen radiation belts, and this is where those protons and electrons bombard the atmosphere, bombard the two main elements, nitrogen and oxygen, cause them to explode and release energy. It releases energy in the form of you guessed it light, so green for oxygen, pink for nitrogen, red for high altitude oxygen. So we just did a little bit of a scientific deep dive there. But I think it's really important to understand that and I can't emphasize it enough, that you need to be around this zone of high magnetic activity.

Speaker 1:

Now the place that I personally like going is called Churchill, canada. It's in Manitoba. It's actually not that far north, it's around the 58th parallel. You'll know that North Pole is basically at 90 degrees, so it's really it's not most of the way up there, it's actually fairly south. This is nice because it's somewhat accessible. You don't get maybe as cold of temperatures as if you were at 85 degrees north. It certainly doesn't take as long to fly up there. But more importantly and we're going to come back to this just in a second is the amount of foreground elements and the ease with which you can get away from light pollution. So you're kind of looking for something that is accessible, something that is a town that has foreground elements, close to the forest, close to structures, close to interesting buildings, but also not so big that you're going to get a lot of light pollution. Also, most importantly, not close to liquid water. This is a huge, huge thing for me.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people like to go to Scandinavia, to Norway, to Finland, to Iceland, and they're looking for aurora in the wintertime because of the dark skies and dark nights. But then they find that because of that liquid water that somewhat quote unquote warm ocean, you know, the ocean is probably like 33, 34 degrees compared to the land, which might be, you know, minus five. It creates clouds and creates weather. So the location is not just dependent on this oval itself, it's also dependent on what kind of weather is around, and this is why I love interior locations. Churchill, although it sits on a frozen bay, is indeed frozen in the winter, so it acts just like land Fairbanks another one it's inland, so you don't have that really high chance of clouds like you might on an island like Iceland that's surrounded by water. The warm water, cold land creates that gradient and it oftentimes creates clouds and a lot of weather. Now, this is not to say that Iceland isn't gorgeous to photograph in the winter.

Speaker 1:

I did so myself this past February on a little expedition of my own. Loved it, but did not see the aurora, and that's a problem if you're aurora hunting. You got to find it. So locations super important. Timing is also very important. When in the year do you want to go and what years do you want to go?

Speaker 1:

Well, you may have heard in the news that the aurora is on an 11-year cycle that is peaking this year and next. We're obviously not sure of when the exact peak is. Usually the peak is recorded and observed best after the peak. When we start going down, it's just continuing to tick up and up, and up and up. The aurora activity is stupendous. What that aurora activity is doing is it's directly in relation to the sun, this big hydrogen ball. All that peak activity, all the 11 year cycle, all that peak that we're at right now is because we're seeing more sun spots on the sun than usual. And it does go in this 11 year cycle. Every 11 years there's a peak and in between those 11 years, so like five to six years, there's a trough, and all this is is when the sun has reduced solar flare, solar wind activity. We still don't know totally why it's this 11 year cycle. I'm sure there are many theories out there. However, we don't totally know why, but we do know it's a thing. So 11 years, we're in it right now.

Speaker 1:

Now is a fantastic time, but unfortunately not all year round is a really great time. You have to go when there are dark skies, right. If you go towards Arctic and subarctic areas in the dead of summer you're probably going to get like 20 hours of daylight and maybe the sun's never going to totally, totally set. So you have to go during winter. My advice is sometime between November and March of the year If you want to kind of hit that bell curve. January, february, fantastic times, but essentially winter. You want to be somewhere around that winter solstice. You get as much dark sky, as much night as possible. So you mix location with something on the aurora, something super cold, so clouds can't form away from water, so clouds are less likely to form. Go during a peak solar year, go during winter. Go during a peak solar year, go during winter and voila, the upcoming season might be the best of all time, truly all time. Yeah, I mean it's a big bold thing to say, but I am so looking forward to the photos that come out of this upcoming winter season.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the real nitty gritty of camera settings. I told you that Aurora Photography is some of the easiest and some of the hardest altogether. The camera settings are advanced, meaning you have to be on manual mode. But I'm going to tell you these settings and you can dial it into your camera and you're not going to really change anything. You can just stick on these settings and change very, very little with the shutter speed here and there, and you're good to go.

Speaker 1:

So, basically, you're going to put your camera on manual, you're going to put your aperture on the smallest F number possible, you're going to put your ISO at around 1600. And then you're going to put your shutter speed around 10 seconds. Okay, so three things aperture, smallest number possible. So 2.8, awesome. F4, awesome. If you have a lens that's too much over F4, okay. Maybe then we have some problems. But pretty much every lens I know out there that's an ultra wide will have the smallest F number, around 3.5 or 4. A lot of them have 2.8. And then ISO around 1600. So you can walk out the door and that's going to give you a really, really great starting point. So 10 seconds. Smallest F number, iso 1600.

Speaker 1:

Now, of course, you're going to want to change some of this stuff, but you're never going to really change the aperture. You want it to be as fast as possible. But you might change your shutter speed, and here's why. Well, first of all, if 1600 is not bright enough but you might want to change your shutter speed you might want to change your ISO as well. Those are the two things you might toy with, but not dramatically, like you're not going to be going down to ISO 100, nor do I advise you going to ISO 12,800. You want to be somewhere in that 1600, 3200 range. You probably know your camera better than most people in terms of its tolerance for high ISOs. My camera does pretty well at 3200, maybe even 6400. But 1600 is going to be the better quality. So I'm going to start with that Now.

Speaker 1:

Shutter speed 10 seconds, I think, is a nice sweet spot to begin your aurora photography. It's not so slow that you're waiting for 2530 seconds between shots. It's also not so fast that you're going to really dramatically limit light, like you're going to get enough light. You're going to see if the aurora is there. But the 10 second exposure is one thing that probably the first thing I'm going to change. I might bump this up to 15 or 20 seconds. So if you think 20 seconds versus 10 seconds would be double the amount of light, I'm looking at the camera, I'm looking at my photo afterwards and I'm seeing if I need to double the light or increase the light in any sort of way.

Speaker 1:

Now, one thing I will caution against is you really don't want to go slower than about 25 seconds. The reason is the rotation of the earth itself is moving fast enough that if you have a 30, 35, 40 second exposure what we would call bulb mode, b-u-l-b bulb mode for just kind of like turning it on and then relying on yourself to then hit the button to close the shutter you can go as long as you want. But if you start going into that 30 and 40 second range, the spinning of the earth actually blurs the stars that you're going to see in your background. They start to look like little worms, like little long lines. So anything over 25 seconds and you really run that risk. So, as a result, I don't go longer than 25 seconds unless I absolutely have to, and that's a super rare occasion.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to give you the reasons for that. It's just me being experimental, really. I'm sticking somewhere around 15 to 20 seconds Now because I can mess around with my ISO and I can double that to 3200, which also lets in twice as much light. I'm kind of ping ponging back and forth Do I increase my shutter speed? Do I decrease my shutter speed? Do I increase my ISO? Do I decrease my ISO? This is where the creativity comes in. This is where your specific scene and exactly what you're looking at will come in. But I am always trying to reduce my shutter speed as well as reduce my ISO. That's the goal.

Speaker 1:

As the Aurora starts really kicking, starts getting really, really bright, I want to start reducing both those. The reason I want to reduce my ISO is because I want better quality in my photo. A dark photo with a high ISO will look grainy, it's going to look noisy, and most cameras over ISO 1600 begin to start looking noisy and grainy. Now caveat out there, there is some extraordinary denoise and high ISO software out there, built into Photoshop, built into Lightroom program, called Topaz denoise. These are really really extraordinary. But you want to be judicious and you still want to get the photo as you want in camera and not rely on the denoise in the sort of long exposure compensations. In addition, I don't recommend having your long exposure denoise feature turned on in your camera itself. Some of these big fancy cameras will allow you to do that. I find that the software in the camera doesn't do as well as the software in Lightroom and Topaz, so I keep that off. Just a little pro tip.

Speaker 1:

But, like I said, I want to continuously decrease my ISO as long as there's enough light, right, and I'm very dependent on how bright the aurora is, how big of a show the aurora is and these little auroral substorms, as they're called. Now, why would I want to also decrease my shutter speed? Shouldn't I just leave it open as long as possible to get as much light and just use that as my sort of pendulum swinging back and forth brighter, increase the shutter, darker, decrease the shutter, yes. However, as the Aurora starts really picking up and really kicking, it will move in front of you. It's like this beautiful serpentine, wave-like pattern and motion in the atmosphere and it's extraordinary. And what happens is when the aurora is really active and really bright, I don't need as much light coming in or I'm able to decrease my shutter but, more importantly, I'm able to stop down that motion. Now it's not moving like a snake, slithering, you know, at a hundred miles an hour over the sand. It's a very slow curtain like effect. But if I have my shutter on for 15 seconds, all that movement, all that definition of the curtain, it's going to move enough that it's just going to be a really big green swath in the sky and I'm going to lose that definition of the curtain. And the curtain of Aurora is what gives it its real classic Northern light shape. So if I can get my shutter down, you know, keep it at 10 seconds, get it down to five seconds, maybe even slower. It's just going to provide more and more definition to the curtain. So here's where you're going to have to make a little bit of your own decision is do you decrease your shutter speed or increase your ISO? Again, I'm not doing anything too crazy. I'm always staying between five and 20 seconds and I'm always staying somewhere around 1600 ISO, maybe dropping into 800, maybe increasing it to 3200. But as you can see, it's a pretty narrow range and that's where you're going to want to go out into the field with knowing your points of flexibility but knowing where your North Star I guess kind of pun intended here where your North Star of settings is. Don't sway too much from the formula I just gave you.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's move on to composition. This is like the actual taking of your photo. So you got your settings, you're in the right place at the right time of year, et cetera, et cetera. How are you setting up your shot? Well, the really key thing is that you have that ultra wide angle lens on so you're able to get as much of the sky and as much of the foreground as possible.

Speaker 1:

And the foreground element is the key part of the equation here. So if you were to take a photo of the Northern Lights, it's in the sky, all diffuse green, and that's your shot, with no relativity, no building, no vehicle, no person, nothing else other than just the sky. It's going to look like you went into a Microsoft paint and just drew a green swath over a black canvas. It is not going to be much to really understand. You want some sort of tree, you want some sort of structure, you want a snowy field, a building, a little outhouse lit from the inside. You know something interesting. That's your focal point, to give it that relativity. So the foreground is something that I think people will often skip over in the flurry to get out there and take the shot, especially if this is their first time. But mapping out and looking for the foreground elements before the aurora gets kicking is a really, really key part of this. So beyond that, there's nothing too crazy or too fancy to talk about other than having ultra wide, the ability to get a lot of the sky and the foreground, picking out that foreground element and then using traditional composition techniques like the rule thirds, like leading lines, like things like the Fibonacci spiral.

Speaker 1:

Another really key benefit of an ultra wide angle lens, even using that at its maximum ultra wide capabilities, is when you're out there. I've said this several times that you're in the cold, you're fussing with mittens on, it might be windy, it's kind of dark, you've got a headlamp on. It's really kind of tricky and challenging to get the shot. You know you're looking through your viewfinder, but everything's dark, right, it's night. Your shot is probably not going to be completely perfectly flat on the horizon. You're probably going to need to crop and straighten a little bit and so, by shooting wider than you really need, that allows you to use that straightening tool in Lightroom or Photoshop. It will bring in the edges a little bit, but you're not going to lose all that much of your scene and, more importantly, if you have that much more of your scene to lose, it's just going to make for a better final result. So ultra wide is also really good for the inevitable error in setting up a shot, maybe not perfectly straight with the horizon or the ground.

Speaker 1:

The other big thing with your foreground element is how close is it to you? So we've already talked about shooting on these fast apertures like F 2.8, maybe even maybe even faster, like F 1.4, if that's something that you have the ability of even F4, you want to make sure that your focus will get the foreground element in focus as well as some of the background as well. So we're going to get into focusing next, because this is one of the hardest parts of Northern Lights photography, of where to focus and how to focus. But one thing I want to set you up for is when you have that foreground element in place. I don't want you to be right up on it, I don't want you to be feet from it, I want it to be a little bit farther back. So your plane of focus allows that to be in focus as well as what might be behind it. Let's say you're photographing an igloo in front of a stand of trees, in front of some more trees in the background. You don't want to be shooting at F 2.8, focus in the background trees and have everything else slightly blurred, or focus on your exact foreground, like the TP, like the igloo, and then everything else be slightly blurred in the background. If you can put yourself away from these objects a little bit more, that will allow these very thin slices of focus that we would have at 2.8. F 2.8 to allow more of the scene, more the foreground and the mid ground to be in focus, not to mention the background, the aurora itself.

Speaker 1:

Let's immediately go into how to focus, because this is a really, really key thing. There's a bit of, even with my guide buddies. There are two schools of thought on how to focus for northern lights. One is to put your lens on infinity focus, so basically focusing into the extreme distance, and this is very logical and kind of obvious. Right, you're photographing something, the aurora that's like 60 miles away from you. Yes, it is 60 miles in the atmosphere. So you know infinity is a way to go.

Speaker 1:

Now, that's all well and good, but I personally use a different technique where I focus on the foreground, maybe at the expense of the sharpness of the aurora itself. But let's go back into the infinity focus. One the the challenges I see there is that if you focus on infinity, that might mean your foreground element, like all these beautiful things we're talking about the stand of trees, the igloo, the teepee, the building, the car, the person if you focus on the infinity and not focus on the foreground, your foreground element might be blurred. And since your foreground element stands out in the photo, it's the closest thing to the viewer, it's likely one of the biggest components of the scene. If that thing is blurred, you're going to have a little bit of a tough time making that a great photo. So I really am very sensitive to that.

Speaker 1:

I'm also sensitive to the fact that infinity focus. When you look on your lens ring and you dial it all the way one direction, you'll see a little infinity symbol. The actual infinity is just a hair tick inside of that extent, like, in other words, you can't dial your ring all the way until it stops and say, oh, that's the most distant. That's actually like super infinity. So to know your own lens and know your own exact infinity settings oftentimes the infinity setting has to be just at the hash mark inside the infinity line itself. And every lens I've played with is a little bit different. And I do know guide buddies that will actually take a marker or put a piece of tape on their lens so they know exactly where their own infinity is for their lens itself. But you can see how these are stumbling blocks. If you're not really familiar with your lens, if you're not really familiar with Northern Lights photography, these are real kind of tricky challenges.

Speaker 1:

So that, combined with the fact that I ultimately want my foreground element in focus, that's the most important thing to me. I go with foreground focus versus infinity focus. So let me give you my patented, tried and true technique. It's not patented, but I don't know. If you're a patent attorney, contact me, we'll. We'll have a chat. Just kidding, I give this away for free, right?

Speaker 1:

So my way of photographing the Aurora and focusing is to do this, okay. So I'm set up. Remember, I've got out earlier in the day or early in the evening and I've figured out, okay, that stand of spruce trees is my foreground element. That's what I want in crisp, sharp focus. Great. So I set up my tripod and what I'm doing when I come out to photograph the Aurora is I will need to ensure that focus is locked on. Maybe I already focused during the daylight, but you know, just to be safe. Okay, so here is my tried and true technique for focusing while photographing Aurora.

Speaker 1:

What I do is when I'm out in front of my scene, you know, I have my spruce trees or my building or whatever it might be, and it is in the dark. We're shooting at night. What I'm going to do is I'm going to have my flashlight on. I'm going to have the row of photographers all sort of in unison, knowing I'm going to shine a flashlight on these spruce trees. I'm going to have my lens on autofocus and I'm going to use my shutter button to autofocus on the margin, the edge of the spruce tree that is lit up.

Speaker 1:

A lot of our autofocus mechanisms rely on contrast, so the light and the dark of the sky behind it, with the bright spruce tree, is what it's going for. So you take your little middle focusing point, align it on the edge of those fur needles or the tree, you know where it meets the horizon or meets the sky and I'm going to auto-focus on it and boom, you know, half a second later it's auto-focused. Then, and this is the most important part of it all, I'm going to take my lens and I'm going to switch from autofocus to manual focus and what that does is that locks in that focus distance to those trees for the rest of the time, unless I move my camera or bump my autofocus ring. So, key thing don't move the autofocus ring from this point on, but now recompose your shot and just know that those spruce trees, every single time you hit the shutter, are going to be tack sharp because of this technique. And then I don't use my flashlight anymore and obviously you've got to be very sensitive to doing this.

Speaker 1:

If you're in the middle of a photograph and someone shines a light, that's going to ruin the photo. So you want to do this as people are setting up or do it when there are no other photographers around. The rest of the time I'm going to have my headlamp on a little red light actually. So I switched from white to red now. So that way, if I do need to see my setting between shots, it's not going to ruin other people's shots around me because of my small little light illuminating my camera. So that allows you to get tack sharp focus each and every time.

Speaker 1:

And then I'm going to take multiple photos in that place without changing my tripod location, without zooming into my lens, just knowing that the trees are in tack sharp focus. The only thing really changing might be where I aim my camera. I might put the trees in the very bottom of my frame or I might make them in the middle of my frame. That won't mess around with that focus at all, but it allowed me different types of composition. But as soon as I want to move locations, like I want to move my tripod forward or backward by, let's say, 10 feet, or to the left by 20 feet to get a new composition, I do have to do that process again. So it's kind of something that is a little bit laborious. This is one of the more challenging parts of Aurora photography is achieving that autofocus each and every time. But I promise you, by using that technique you get your foreground and tack sharp focus every single time and it's going to give you glorious, glorious results.

Speaker 1:

So moving on now I want to talk about a different dimension to Aurora photography, and that is Aurora time-lapse photography. This is something that is all over the internet and something that I think a lot of people really like to watch. Doing time lapse may be another thing. It's actually pretty challenging, not to mention the fact that it essentially ties up your camera for 30 minutes or an hour while it's doing the time lapse, so you better think about having a backup camera in case you want to get individual photos during that time. So I'll say that again, time lapse is great, but it does mean your camera has to be continuously taking photos on its own, you not taking individual photos for the entire duration of that time lapse, but nevertheless it produces amazing results, and most of the quote-unquote videos of Aurora that we see out there today online in various media, those are not actually recorded video in a conventional way. They are time lapses, meaning that 10 second video represents an hour of movement of the Aurora, and this is a really, really important thing to consider.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you nail it and get a beautiful time lapse of Aurora, it's one of the most glorious videos and one of the most beautiful things you'll see. So I do want to give you some basic tips and tricks on how to do this. So, in terms of all the settings that I talked about, it's going to be the same, because essentially, what you're trying to do is take about a hundred photos in, you know, a 30 minute time period. So, in terms of the shutter speed and and the aperture and all this, you know you're not going to make too too many changes here, because you want individual photos to come out properly exposed. You want your composition, your wide, you want your focus point. Everything I told you up until now stays the same. So if you were to set your camera up in a beautiful area at the start of the Aurora and start this time-lapse mode, the goal would be to let it go for, you know, 30 minutes or 60 minutes and turn it into a relatively brief five or 10 second video where there's a lot of movement. The aurora might seem to explode from one direction and dance on the horizon. It's really quite beautiful.

Speaker 1:

So there's an equation out there that essentially lets you know how many photos you should take and what is the duration. More importantly, what is the duration between each photo? Now, many cameras will have the feature that allows you to set your camera on multiple exposures or let it just continuously run and take photo after photo after photo. This is called intervalometer, or an intervalometer tool is something you attach to your camera to allow it to do this. Years ago, before cameras had this built in, I used to have a little intervalometer that I had to plug in my camera and dial in all these settings. But nowadays, most cameras allow you to do this and you have to set a few things. One you have to set the duration, like how long will your camera keep on taking photos? I like to say just infinite, just keep it going until I go and tell it to stop. And then, more importantly, you have to tell it the duration between each photo.

Speaker 1:

The equation out there is you're going to want to figure out how long do you want your ultimate video to be. Like you know, you don't want to create a time lapse, that's you know 45 seconds for someone to watch, like that's too long to share online. Or to put you know to give someone your phone and have them look at it. So you want to say, well, okay, five or 10 seconds. So five or 10 seconds is a pretty good total time for your ultimate time lapse. Now you have to do a little bit of math here. So if you want a five or 10 second video, every second takes about 24 photos to cycle through. In other words, if you put 24 photos back to back in one second, that is what we call video. Most videos are 24 P or sometimes 30 frames a second. But if you get 24 frames a second all in sequence, you essentially are able to show this time-lapse video. So if you want a 10 second video, 24 seconds, so 10 second video at 24 frames a second is 240 frames exactly.

Speaker 1:

So then you have to figure out how long does this 10 second video represent, in other words, how much time has gone by in real time that this 10 second video now represents? It might be 30 minutes, it might be 10 minutes. You know one second per minute. So you want to figure out how long does this now 10 second final time lapse actually represent in real time? And there's no magic amount of time. It really depends on the activity of the Aurora, your own patients, but I think something like 30 minutes, 60 minutes is a pretty good bell weather. I do know some photo guides that set their camera up at the beginning of the night and they turn it off at the end of the night. So we're talking about hours and that's obviously a really good fail, safe for making sure it is on this time lapse mode while the Aurora is really kicking on. But typically, if you're looking at a one-hour Aurora show that you turn into 10 seconds. The equation is one hour is 60 minutes, 60 seconds per minute. So 60 times 60, which is 3,600 seconds divided by that 240, and then you get your interval between each shot. So I think that might be 15 second intervals. I don't know, I'm just thinking about this. So 3,600 divided by 24 times total number of seconds of your end video is the equation. I'll put this in the show notes for sure.

Speaker 1:

Last little bit I'll tell you is if you want to do a time lapse, I highly recommend switching from raw to JPEG. You can go in with advanced programs like Adobe After Effects and some really slick video editing programs and you can edit your raws. So the photos are a little bit better, but gosh, it is. That is a really, really pro job to do that. Plus that many raw photos you're talking about maybe hundreds, if not 1000s of raw photos is going to really deplete your memory card. So I do recommend going in turning your raw photos into JPEG. So every photo is a JPEG and, most importantly, do not forget to turn it back from JPEG to raw at the end of the night, because then the next day you don't want to forget and have every photo for the rest of the trip be in JPEG if you are a raw photographer and like to edit your photos. So really, really key thing there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, at long last I wanted to get to phone photography. This is gonna be the quickest and easiest section, because all these phones will automatically adjust to night mode. All you really need to do is be in a great location at a great time of year with some great foreground elements, doing all the compositional stuff I was talking about, and putting your phone in that area, maybe using an ultra wide lens, if your camera has that capability and then hitting the shutter and keeping your phone as still as possible while that little timer times out. Usually it's just one second, which is absolutely wild because if you think about the amount of time we need on our bigger, fancier cameras 10, 15, sometimes even 20 second exposures the software in these phones that enable that is pretty slick and pretty amazing. Now the thing is that these phones are not going to produce results that you were going to necessarily frame on your wall or blow up to 24 by 36 inches in a framed photo, but they are going to produce something that documents the experience very well. They're going to produce something great for social media. They're going to produce something great if you have a little post-trip little photo book you're going to make, but they're going to look like they're from a phone. They're going to be a little bit dim, they're not going to be quite as vibrant, the colors aren't going to be quite as sharp, but nevertheless, just by holding your phone there for about a second, some of these phones will have two little crosshairs that you have to line up just to allow you to keep your phone more still. If you want to go next level and put your phone on a tripod, all the better, but there's a lot of stabilization software in your phones that will do this for you. So again, just about every phone out there in the last three years your Google Pixels, your iPhones, your Galaxies, all this sort of stuff in the last few years so, like iPhone 14, yeah, iphone 14 and up pretty darn good giving you these results. So the final thing I want to talk about is going to be my gear.

Speaker 1:

What do I personally have to photograph the Aurora? I have a full frame camera, which does make a big difference. Full frame means bigger sensor. It means it allows you to get higher ISO, which means I can let in more light with a very similar lens compared to a crop frame. I have a Canon R5 and I shoot with a 15 to 35 f2.8 lens. It's a magical, magical lens for Aurora, because 15 millimeters in a full frame camera is kind of like 10 millimeters in a crop frame and it's very, very wide. I can get a lot of the foreground, a lot of the sky, and that f2.8 allows me to not really have to worry very much about the lighting conditions. F2.8 is fast. I keep on saying, choose ultra wide or ultra fast, but the 15-35mm f2.8 allows you to do it both. So this is where I say, if you are going on a specialized Aurora photo trip, it may be worth considering renting a lens. I know Nikon has their own equivalent of a 14 to 24 f 2.8. Sony has a 16 to 35 2.8, canon 15 to 35 2.8. They are really, really game changers when it comes to getting the best, the most professional, the highest quality Aurora photographs out there.

Speaker 1:

I also have two different tripods. I have a Manfrotto, carbon fiber. The legs are three segments of extension. Honestly, you could probably get away with just a two-segment tripod. It's a little bit more sturdy, a little bit heavier, a little bit bigger, but more sturdy. My other tripod is a Peak Design travel tripod carbon fiber. It is a little bit more lightweight but it has a hook on the bottom of it that can hang a backpack and actually weigh it down further that way. Way it's less likely to sway in the wind or any sort of breeze that might be coming through. So I really love those two.

Speaker 1:

And then, yeah, just make sure I have a good. Yeah. And then the last thing is just making sure you have some really good batteries. Yeah, and the last thing is just making sure you have a couple extra batteries. Batteries do die a bit faster in the cold, but, as we've learned from a previous podcast with Eddie Savage, he believes that as these cameras are on and the sensors are, batteries do tend to die a little bit faster if they're in extreme cold conditions, but probably not as fast as you think. So I think maybe three batteries total one in camera and two fresh and ready to go is really the best way to do it. I certainly would bring a backup battery at very least, and two is better than one.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we're now on to our listener question, and the question comes in today of what do you think about multi purpose wide angle zoom telephotos like your 18 to 300s, your 18 to 400s? They seem to be one stop shop lenses that can do it all. You don't have to change your lenses and they produce pretty good results. What are your thoughts? So I don't have one, and the reason is because I think there's higher quality in the photo. There's higher quality in the aperture range if you have several lenses that cover that range. So, in other words, here's an example. So if I have an 18 to 400, my aperture range in that is probably gonna be something like F 3.5 to F 6.3. And what that means is, as I continually zoom in from 18 to 400, my minimum aperture or I should say my maximum aperture, my smallest F number is going to be variable. It's going to get higher and higher and higher as I zoom in. Now, f 6.3 for 400 isn't too too bad, but you'll notice that even midway down the range, my 200 millimeter might be f5.6. And I have a 7200 millimeter f2.8, which gives me four times the amount of light and it's just a significantly better lens. So they are great lenses.

Speaker 1:

If you do want to go super lightweight, if you're okay sacrificing some of the aperture and some of the ability to shoot in dim conditions, or if you do want to go super lightweight, if you're okay sacrificing some of the aperture and some of the ability to shoot in dim conditions, or if you're okay with a little bit of lack of sharpness in your photos, prime lenses are always going to be your sharpest option. They have no zoom range. A 35 millimeter prime only shoots at 35, 50 millimeter, only 50, 100, only 100. They're always going to be your sharpest option because the entire set of optics are optimized for that exact range. As your zoom range gets more and more and more, you lose quality throughout an entire range, throughout that entire spectrum. So you have to really go into it, knowing that you're kind of not getting the best of the best. And if that's okay with you, and if it's more important to be ultra lightweight, if it's more important to you to save time and not changing lenses, which is a huge benefit. To not have to change lenses, then they are okay. They're also in some cases, quite expensive, which is something that you know. You can wrap your head around in some cases, but if you do see one of these maximum versatility ranges that are very inexpensive, you know that you're probably sacrificing more quality than you're ready to do because they should be expensive if they're giving you all those capabilities and being sharp throughout. All right, folks, there we go.

Speaker 1:

End of the episode, a deep dive into Northern Lights photography. I want to remind you a couple of quick things. If you head over to my website, courtwhalencom, you can sign up for my e-newsletter, and I do send out blogs and articles on photography and my adventures every couple of weeks, so I'd love to have you be a subscriber there. In addition, I'd like to hear your listener questions. You can shoot me an email at wildphotographerpodcast at gmailcom, and I'll get those answered on air. You can also head over to my YouTube channel, courtwhalencom. Leave a comment there, let me know how you like the podcast, submit questions, thoughts, ideas, also maybe some inspiration for new episodes. And, at very last, I want to thank you for listening today and I hope you get up there and shoot some Aurora here in the not too distant future. It's gonna be a great season ahead of us, and I wish you the best of luck.

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