Christmas Eve Northern Lights

Pentax K5 + DA 12-24

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wow! Beautiful!

Beautiful. Who needs Christmas lights with that outside?

I hope you had a God Jul and have a godt nytt år .

WOW Spectacular

I have been told recently that it is only the camera that renders the lights as green. Is this true?

By the way I always look forward to your Northern Lights photos this time of year.

Dave

No, but it does make them greener. Sometimes they look white to the human eye but come out green in camera, but often you do see them green, or red with the naked eye, but not as intensely so as in photos.
The very first time I saw them they looked like a white cloud, except you could see the stars through them. The photos I took were green though.

On our last trip they were white and no-one on the ship believed they were aurora, or perhaps were just incredibly disappointed in them, so that when they appeared again another evening no-one was outside and we had the entire dancing green light show to ourselves .

Absolutely beautiful.
David
PPG: http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/artists/davidtrout

Gwyn has already done a good job at answering your question, but I have to add some things. Firstly, the strength of a Northern Lights occurance can vary between not visible to the human eye, till very bright and highly visible light. When I shot the photos above the Aurora Forecast predicted KP indexes between 4 and 5, which is medium powerful. Kp index 9 is the most powerful. If you look at the photos above you can probably see that number 3 has the most powerful aurora, and number 4 the most subtle/weak light. When processing the RAW files from Northern Light photos, my aim is to try and make the aurora look like what I saw it in the dark night. Some people brighten up their Northern Light images to make them maybe more impressive or pleasing. Mine come out somewhat more dark, hopefully more true to what I saw.

Sometimes when the Northern Lights are very weak, maybe Kp index 1 or 2, they are not visible to the human eye. But the brilliant sensor in the K5 can capture them for us.

Thank you for your comments!

Gwyn: Jeg ønsker deg en riktig God Jul og et Godt Nyttår!

Very nice

great images. What settings do you use?

Super set Bjorn...

Best

Thank you very much!

The settings I used for these shots were:

Pentax K5 + DA 12-24

FOV: 12mm
Aperture: f4
ISO: 1600
Exposures: 15 seconds
RAW
WB: Flourescent lights - warm light (this will produce a good point of departure, before Lightroom/ Aperture PP)
Manual focus, pre-set for infinity.
Self timer 2 seconds
Tripod