@bb2 - Thanks! That sounds like it would have been a really good idea for convenience, but do you think it would have increased noise in the image?

@gwyn - Thanks as well! I looked it up and it looks like you can turn it off, although I have not tried it myself. p98 of the manual.

Sounds like it might be worth trying on the really long exposures to cut down on waiting around time. But I would be worried that I'd get more noise in the image. Has anyone tried it?

Thanks a lot for the kind comments! These are the first photos I've put up on the forum. I'll keep going! Need to get some more developed from RAW.

@alfpics - I was really impressed with the battery actually. I did an entire evening of long exposure shooting with a single battery, including that half an hour one, and it was fine. I think the cold makes it drain more rapidly but it was only(!) about -4°C so it wasn't too bad. Very happy with the battery life on the k-30 overall.

On the plus side the cold means that the auto long exposure noise reduction doesn't get activated as often. So 30 second exposures only take 30 seconds. The painful bit on that first image was waiting another full half an hour for the noise reduction exposure to finish!

Hi guys! I'm back. Sad times.

But Iceland is amazing! Everyone should go.

We had 3 nights of lights, two in Skaftafell (first 3 photos) and one in Skálavegur (last photo).

I doubt the lights we saw were anything that the locals would get too excited about but we loved it. Strong enough to see the shapes distinctly and even strong enough to see a little bit of the red fringing around the green.

We were also there, by pure chance, during the hight of the Geminid meteor shower so there were hundreds of shooting stars to look at while we were waiting for long exposures to stop.

So I'm just getting down to some editing. I'll post a few now. Possibly a few more to come:



ISO-800, 1993 seconds, f3.5, 18mm




ISO-3200, 25 seconds, f3.5, 18mm




ISO-3200, 20 seconds, f3.5, 18mm




ISO-1600, 25 seconds, f3.5, 18mm


Or see the full sized stuff on flickr here: link

All of these were shot RAW and have been developed in Lightroom.

What do you think? I'd really appreciate any criticism. I'm feeling a bit lost when it comes to how best to process the RAW! The lights were not very bright so I was forced to use fairly long exposures and fairly high ISO. So I'm also trying to battle noise levels.

I've gone for slightly different settings with each of these. Trying out showing detail in the foreground vs blacking it out entirely.

Hmm... so it really depends on the lens and then other situational factors, temp etc.

I wonder if the best thing is just to try to do it manually once out in the cold and then tape it. The tutorial link suggests focusing on the moon or using live view pointing at the stars... Sounds like that ought to work.

Another consideration is exposure. This link recommends shooting the shortest possible exposure to ensure that you capture the shape of the lights without their movement causing blur:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8217618174/auroral-photography-a-guide-to-capturing-the-northern-lights

I think that might be backed up by Bjolester's images. The first two which were 20 seconds look a bit more smudged than the final 3 which were 13 or 15 seconds.

Certainly sounds like it will be worth testing my camera's ISO noise to see if I can push above 1600. I'll be shooting RAW so that should give some leeway.

Thanks David. I think I'll save the cash in that case. I certainly will be taking a tripod so should be all good on that front. I don't imagine I'll be wanting to shoot at anything other than 18mm for this so f3.5 / 4 hopefully will be wide enough.

The Pentax-M 28mm F3.5 does look great though. I'll add it to the wish list in my head!


Thanks Paul. Those links are really helpful. It's encouraging that Bjolester is shooting at f4 in those shots and they came out beautifully. I guess this confirms that I don't need to worry about my kit lens not being up to it aperture wise. I wonder if I could push the iso any higher than 1600. May not even be necessary depending on how bright it gets.

Also those shots made me realise that these are still basically landscape shots. Having objects in focus in the foreground makes the image more engaging. That might be an argument against using too wide an aperture anyway.

I'm not sure I quite get the manual focus thing. I'd naively thought that I could just whack the ring round to infinity. Guess it depends on the lens in question. I'll have to have a play with mine. Again I suppose that being forced onto smaller apertures will help here.


Thanks a lot for the replies. Getting excited now. I'll certainly share photos and tips (assuming I pick up any!) when I'm back.

You could install a linux partition on your pc and then there are a good number of free video editing tools to choose from.

Open Shot seems to be recommended on a number of sites but I've never used it myself:

http://www.openshotvideo.com/

Hi all,

Not posted anything here for a while but I've been lurking! I am off to Iceland next week. Hoping to get some northern lights shots (and also lots of general landscape, mountains, glaciers etc!)

I was wondering if anyone has any tips?

I'll be taking my standard 18-55 kit lens. But not sure what else to bring. I don't want to overload myself bringing loads of lenses. Others that I am considering are:

Pentax-A 1:1.7 50mm
Pentax-DA 1:2.4 35mm
Pentax-A Zoom 1:3.5~4.5 28~80mm (doubt I'll be bringing this)

My only concern is that I don't have anything simultaneously wide angle and wide aperture enough for night time landscapes (inc northern lights). I don't really have any budget for another lens but I was thinking about buying a cheap f2.8 28mm manual off ebay. There seem to be lots for £30ish. Something like this one:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/auto-sunagor-mc-cd-ii-2-8-28mm.html

Or maybe I should just stick to the ones I have and work them to their advantages. Any tips would be much appreciated. And I'll make sure to post anything decent that I get on here when I get back!

Hi John,

You are right. It's just that I have come to respect and trust the advice that I have had from the regulars on this forum. You have never steered me wrong!

I'll have a look and see if I can identify a manual setting. Your reply gave me a direction for my google searches though and I found this:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-slr-lens-discussion/57058-helios-44m-4...

It sounds like maybe you have to stick the pin down permanently to get it to work.

Thanks for your help.

This is not strictly pentax relevant but I hope someone will be able to help me. I recently bought a Helios 44M-4 (M42 mount) for a friend to use on his Canon 7D.

With an adapter it should fit on fine but the only thing I don't understand is how the camera will stop down the aperture when a photo is taken. The lens has a small spring-loaded button on the back which when pressed closes the aperture. Will the camera be able to do that? Or is there a special process for using these older lenses?

I have never had to deal with adapters because all of my old lenses fit happily onto my K mount. Good old pentax!

Any help would be great.

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I have managed to get something together on lightroom that is doing the trick. In the end it's not really at all like the venture stuff (I think I do need some studio time if I was going to go all out) but I've managed to get the look of it being very highlighted but without losing the detail. Not managed to seperate the subjects from the background but I don't think it matters too much because the background is quite nice anyway.

I'll post some examples when I have got them exported.

Thanks again for the help!