Daily Life

The Northern Lights are predicted to be good tonight and tomorrow night

If anyone is planning on shooting the Northern Lights tonight you should go outside NOW (in the daylight) with your camera and widest angle lens. Pick something as far away as you can (the Highwood Mountains would be good from here!) and focus the camera on it. Turn off the auto-focus (AF) on the lens, and put a piece of tape (electrical works best) on the focusing ring to keep it set at Infinity. DON’T MOVE THE FOCUSING RING WHILE YOU ARE TAPING IT! Leave the AF off. You will be focused to shoot the Northern Lights! They are too dim to use the AF on the lens.

Exposure suggestions:

This photo was shot at ISO 3200, f4, 15 seconds, MANUAL EXPOSURE MODE. You can go higher on the ISO or lower on the shutter speed. 30 seconds is the maximum usually before you start getting star trails (the line left by stars as the Earth moves under them).

You will need a tripod, or something convenient and stable to set the camera on. A tripod is best (even a cheap one).

Play around with your exposure times: digital means never having to wait for your photos to come back from the drugstore. To put it another way, look at your LCD screen and adjust the exposure form there. Take lots, electrons are cheap!

The almost full Moon may cause problems with too much light, so try to shoot theMoon at your back as best you can.

How to predict them:

A good predictor site for the Northern Lights is: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html The redder the mass is covering your location on the map, the more likely you will be able to see the Lights (weather permitting…).  The RED ARROW on the map is  NOON at that location.  It is suppose to update ever 15-30 minutes.  The TIME listed is ZULU, UTC or Greenwich Mean Time, at Zero Degrees Longitude in Greenwich, England.  We are at -6 hours UTC here in Montana right now, so subtract six hours from the UTC time to get the local time of an event listed under UTC time.

NOTE: Don’t forget to 1) remove the tape and turn AF on when you are done, and 2) reset the ISO to something in the low three digits (100, 125, 160, etc). 3200 and a sunny day don’t get along!

Don’t forget to show off your photos, either!

~Curtis in /\/\onTana! {!-{>