Astrophotography 101
1. Your camera will need to be absolutely still because of the longer exposure needed at night. As such, a ****tripod is pretty much necessary to take good photographs of the lights! If you have a backpack or are able to find some rocks to prop your camera on top of, you might be able to place your camera on there and tilt it upwards to the sky. If you’re like me and don’t normally use a tripod to shoot your pictures, it’s a good idea to get familiar with your tripod. I hadn’t “practiced” with it at all and so it took a few minutes to get used to this tripod’s particular way of rotating the camera and such. But even with a tripod, it’s a good bet to use a self-timer of at least 2 seconds so that you don’t move the camera at all when you press down the shutter. Some cameras like my Fujifilm X-T1 have a mobile app which you can connect your phone to your camera in order to use it as a remote! The app came incredibly handy. I would point my camera to whichever part of the sky I wanted to photograph, then adjust any settings (which you can even do on the app!) and then press the button on my phone to take the shot. My camera was still during all of this! Another option is to use a bulb remote.
2. Photographing the night requires longer exposure than the fraction of seconds we use during the day. Long exposure can be anywhere from 1 second to 30 seconds, depending on how fast the lights are moving. You’re going to want to watch the lights for a little and then decide what shutter speed to use. 4-7 seconds is usually sufficient for fast moving lights, while slower lights might require anywhere from 7-15 seconds. I found that 3 seconds ended up being what I used for most of my pictures! You’ll want to be on manual for this; my Fujifilm X-T1 has standard shutter speeds and then a T option where you can manually select any shutter speed greater than 0.5 seconds. Exposure time is something to master because if you select a shutter speed that is too long for the situation, you will get star trails. If that’s the shot you’re going for, congrats, now you know how to recreate it! If not, you’ll want to check your shots to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough so the stars aren’t moving.
3. Getting the stars in focus is what most people have a hard time with; the trick to this is infinity focus. This means you want something far off in the horizon to be in focus, which means you can actually practice this during the day! Some cameras will have an infinity mark when you are in manual focus; for my Fujifilm X-T1, this focus meter doesn’t come up on the LCD screen, only when I look through the viewfinder. Because I had a hard time finding that/knowing what it looked like, I used this little trick to ensure I knew where my infinity mark was (it ended up being a bit off from what the camera suggested but based on what I read online, it usually is). Go out during the day and point your camera towards something far off in the horizon. Zoom in and put your camera in manual focus, ensuring that whatever far off object you choose is in focus. Take the picture and check to see if it did end up being in focus; if so, you have found your infinity mark! If not, try again. Most photographers like to mark this point on the focus ring with a silver Sharpie so you can always find it. I didn’t have one on me and I did this right before leaving for the airport (what a procrastinator, am I right?) so I cut a thin little sliver of micro pore tape I had to put over gauze (multipurpose!) and put it on the spot of the focus ring that lined up with the marker on the part of the lens that doesn’t move. When you’re out at night, put your camera in manual focus and align the marker with your infinity mark and your stars should be in focus!
4. What ISO should you use? This was the thing I was least knowledgeable about. I peeked at my tour guide’s camera to see what ISO he was using, which was ISO 3200. His pictures came out really dark, and when I tried myself, it was also extremely dark, basically pitch black on my camera. I tried a bunch of different ones but ended up sticking with ISO 6400. Pick an ISO that will balance the highlights and shadows of the image; this might require some checking after your pictures to see which ISO will work best. If anything, you’ll want your photos to be on the darker side so that during post-processing, you can lighten them back up without blowing out the highlights.
5. Speaking of post-processing, shoot RAW! It takes up a lot more space on your memory card, but preserves more information for the photo, which means post-processing a lot easier. I had a 32 GB memory card and filled it all up with photos just from my Northern Lights hunt so good thing I had a second 32 GB card on me (having multiple cards is definitely recommended whenever you’re traveling). I primarily shoot in JPEG, but I wanted the best pictures for the Northern Lights possible and so I finally tried out shooting in RAW. One perk of shooting in RAW is that you are able to adjust the exposure and white balance much easier without compromising other aspects of the photos, such as the highlights and shadows, which is essential to astro photography and especially to any photographs of the Northern Lights!