Aurora first timer (C&C welcome)

[Low_Sky]

I made my first attempt at photographing the aurora borealis last week. It was a big learning experience for sure. Probably the #1 thing I learned is the importance of getting your composition framed and focus locked in before it gets dark. I showed up at the spot after dark, and was manually focusing by trial and error with 20 second exposures. I didn't bring tape to lock in the manual focus, and inadvertently bumped the lens out of focus a couple times with aurora going on. Arg! There was no moon light, so the limited light to expose the foreground was coming from light pollution. Despite all the "learning opportunities", I think I got a couple of keepers (for a newb).

#1
t3i-5987 by Low_Sky, on Flickr

#2
t3i-5973 by Low_Sky, on Flickr

 

[WesternGuy]

Not too bad. As someone who has shot the Aurora Borealis a few times, I am curious which of your two lenses you used and what sort of aperture and ISO you used. I ask because 20 seconds is a long time for the Aurora. You lose the finer details in the moving lights even though your "focus" is quite good.

WesternGuy

 

[Derrel]

Ohhhhh, I like the second one quite a bit.

 

[jsecordphoto]

I would disagree that 20" is too long of an exposure for what looks like "mild" aurora. For stronger aurora shows I certainly back off on the exposure times, but I doubt you lost much detail doing a longer exposure here.

Great first attempt! Enjoy the chase

 

[Low_Sky]

Not too bad. As someone who has shot the Aurora Borealis a few times, I am curious which of your two lenses you used and what sort of aperture and ISO you used. I ask because 20 seconds is a long time for the Aurora. You lose the finer details in the moving lights even though your "focus" is quite good.

WesternGuy

I would disagree that 20" is too long of an exposure for what looks like "mild" aurora. For stronger aurora shows I certainly back off on the exposure times, but I doubt you lost much detail doing a longer exposure here.

Great first attempt! Enjoy the chase

Thanks very much for the comments. I used the Canon 18-55 kit lens for both, it's the shortest lens I own.

#1 was 18mm, f/4, 10 sec, ISO 1600.
#2 was 18mm, f/5, 30 sec, ISO 400.

I was experimenting with exposure settings, with different combos of f/3.5-5.0, ISO 400-1600, and 6-30 sec exposures. A fast, short lens is on my wish list, but for now I'm just trying to get the most I can out of this kit lens. Jsecordphoto is right, this was pretty mild aurora and I didn't feel I was losing too much with longer exposures. Most of the lights were just long horizontal bands like #2, so there wasn't much detail to lose.

 

[EYESOFICE83]

The second one is great.